308 



DISCOVERS 



Sir, 



Correspondence 



ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES 

 To the Editor of Discovery 



It is good news that the purely academic word 

 study of such names is to be co-ordinated with the 

 growing mass of local obser^-ation of facts concerning the 

 places. 



There is one factor in their meaning so important that 

 in my observation it is the determining influence in 

 at least one-third the place-names. And yet it seems to 

 have been unsuspected and unknown until a year ago. 

 Students have usually looked to some characteristic of 

 the place itself, or of its historj-, to explain its name. 

 The factor I refer to is the prehistoric straight-sighted 

 trackway on which the place itself stands. Either the 

 tvpe of sighting point which formerly occupied the site, 

 or some characteristic of the entire trackway, or the class 

 of trader coming with his wares along the track, or the 

 type of wares which he brought, are, I find, embedded in 

 hundreds of place-names. 



The miller at Rhos-goch (red-marsh) from whom I 

 inquired the name of a lofty hill in sight at the head of a 

 valley told me it was the " Red Hill," and added : "It 

 always puzzles me why, because there never is anything 

 red about the hill, at any time of the day or season of 

 year." I was able to tell him that in the " Kiln-ground 

 Wood " at Wliitney-on-Wye (a few miles away) we had 

 discovered the scrap-heaps of an ancient pottery making 

 red-ware, and that I found radiating from this spot 

 straight lines passing through " red " place-names such 

 (to name one track) as Redborough, The Red Lay (a 

 cottage), and the Red House, and that this one line was 

 confirmed as being a track by the fact that it lies for two 

 miles on a road marked " Roman " on the map. I 

 cannot take space to detail how " wdiite " roads radiate 

 from such points of salt production as Droitwich, in 

 straight-sighted tracks through the " Wliite House," 

 Whitwick, ^^'ych Pass, Whitman's Wood, Whiteway, 

 etc., and the kindred proofs (not yet so fully worked out) 

 attaching to black, brown, and gold place-names. 



I wTite tliis in a farm-house, one of four houses which 

 in about half a mile come exactly in a straight line, which 

 continued passes precisely through churches and other 

 sighting points. The houses are " Lower Raven, " " Upper 

 Raven," "Blue Bowl," and " Upper Bowl." The two 

 " Bowl " sites are high knuckles on the track. I have 

 found the same place-name element in another part of 

 the county linking up into a straight line at Bowley Lane, 

 Bowley, and Bowley Field. I can surmise what it means ; 

 it relates either to a sighting point on the track (there is a 

 Bowls Barrow in ^^'iltshire), or to wares brought along 

 the track. In the former case it would indicate a shape, 

 as I find evidence that the place-name element " bell " 

 does. Valuable as is Professor Skeat's method of studying 

 earlier forms of a word, it is only an adjunct in solving 

 names going back to prehistoric times, not a basis. 



If these two places were " bowl " places before the 

 Romans came (as I feel sure they were), it is only an 



incident in their historj- to learn how the Anglo-Saxons 

 rendered them. 



Yours, etc., 

 Hereford, Alfred Watkixs. 



September 23, 1922. 



[As this letter raises some important points, the Director 

 of the Survey of English Place-names, Professor A. Mawer, 

 has kindly WTitten the following note upon it : 



It would be very difficult, without much more detailed 

 evidence than is given in Mr. Watkins' letter, to form 

 any just or final conclusion upon his theories. They are 

 based entirelv upon the modern forms, and quite apart 

 from any other difficulties which might be raised about 

 Mr. Watkins' views, it makes one rather uneasy that in 

 the only one of his names for which I know of an ancient 

 form, viz. Bowls Barrow in Wiltshire, the early evidence 

 is in direct contradiction of them. The barrow is men- 

 tioned in a Saxon Charter (Birch no. 1215) preserved only 

 in a fifteenth-century transcript (the identification is due 

 to Dr. G. B. Grundy), and the form is bodelusburge . The 

 first element is obscure, but it is clear that it has no 

 connection with any word bowl or bole which ^Nlr. Watkins 

 postulates for the explanation of his series of names.] 



Sir, 



INTOXICATING HONEY 

 To the Editor of Discovery 



May I contribute a scrap of evidence in proof of 

 the toxic qualities of the honey secreted by certain 

 plants ? In my garden in Kent is a flourishing toxic 

 lime-tree which flowers and fruits from two to three 

 weeks later than the British species, and w-hich is raided 

 by many species of bees. During one afternoon this 

 season I counted the carcasses of over one hundred in- 

 toxicated bees on the lawn beneath the tree. They fall 

 plumb, stagger or crawl a few yards, and die. If one 

 should happen to recover, she (not unlike certain creatures 

 higher in the animal world) at once returns to her cups. 

 The honey appears to be less fatal to the hive bees, who 

 furnish only about 5 per cent, of the victims. 



Yours, etc., 



CAMBRIDGE. T. OkeY. 



September 13, 1922. 



Continued frimi p. 294.] 



certain areas of the brain, the patient cannot restrain himself 

 from waving his arras about when he hears music, emotional 

 co-ordination and balance having been lost. These facts 

 bring into strong relief the intimate connection between mind 

 and its vehicle, the ner%'ous system. We are not, however, 

 within measurable distance of a complete comprehension of 

 the functions of the brain. One portion is connected with 

 hand movements, another with the interpretation of images 

 on the retina of the eye, but when all has been told the greater 

 part of the brain is included under the term " The Silent 

 Areas," where stimulation in animals has no effect, and disease 

 in man no specific symptoms. And, were we able to map 

 out the brain to the uttermost, the problem of consciousness 

 would not be solved. Some day, as the great French physi- 

 ologist Claude Bernard prophesied, we may reduce a sym- 

 phon}- of Beethoven to the vibration of molecules in the brain 

 — but we will not have elucidated all the mysteries of harmony. 

 Behind the most intimate analysis of psychology and the 

 geography and mechanics of the brain, human individualitj' 

 still remains the province of the poet rather than the scientist. 



