168 



DISCOVERY 



British Plant Names and their Derivations. By R. J. 



Harvey-Gibson, C.B.E., D.Sc. (A. & C. Black, 



Ltd., 25. 6d.) 

 The Works of Aristotle. Translated into English Meteor- 



alogica. (Oxford : at the Clarendon Press, ys. 6d.) 

 On the Existence of a Hitherto Unrecognised Factor Essential 



for Reproduction. By Herbert M. Evans and K. 



Scott Bishop. (Reprint from Science, vol. Ixi.) 

 Alternating-current Electrical Engineering. By M. T. 



Maccall. (University Tutorial Press, Ltd., 155.) 



PSYCHOLOGY 

 Character and the Unconscious. A critical exposition of 



the psychology of Freud and Jung. By J. H. Van 



DER Hoop. An authorised translation by Elizabeth 



Trevelvan. (Kegan Paul, los. bd.) 

 A Study of American Intelligence. By Carl C. Brigh.^m, 



Ph.D. A foreword by Robert H. Yerkes, Ph.D. 



(Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 165.) 

 Heredity and Child Culture. By Henry D wight Chapin, 



M.D. (Routledge, 6s.) 



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& Co., Ltd., 7s. 6d.) 

 Below the Snow Line. By Douglas W. Freshfield, 



D.C.L. (Constable & Co., Ltd., 1S5.) 

 The Railroad Picture-book. Pictogram No. i. (The 



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 The Oldest Letters in the World — Tell us What ? By Mrs. 



Sidney Bristowe. (George Allen &. Unwin, 5s.) 



Correspondence 



To the Editor of Discovery 

 Dear Sir, 



Professor Mawer, in his article on " Some Types of 

 English Place-names," in the April number of Discovery, 

 gives the element ea as meaning stream or river. Years 

 ago I was living on the edge of the fen district ; and 

 during my travels across the fens, I found a series of 

 names containing the ea element, i.e. Eastrea, Oldeamere, 

 Waldersea, Stonea, and Manea. 



I was told that the ea element of these names meant 

 island. 



I should be much obliged if Professor Mawer would 

 inform me if in the fen district it has this interpretation, 

 or whether I have been misinformed. 



I should also be pleased if he would enlighten me 

 whether or not the originals of Ramsey, Whittlesey, and 

 Thorney, were Ramsea, Whittlesea, and Thornea. 

 I am, yours truly, 



Albert R. Thornewell. 

 Fir Tree House, 

 I\1ucklow Hill, 

 Hales Owen. 

 April II, 1923. 



[Professor Mawer has been kind enough to send us 



the following solution of the problems raised by our 

 correspondent. — Ed.] 



In the case of Eastrea, Professor Skeat, in the Place- 

 names of Cambridgeshire, gives the early form Estrey. 

 He mentions Stonea and Manea and suggests that they 

 once had the suffix ey, but he could give no early form. 

 Confirmation of his view is to be found, however, in a 

 form Maneye in an Inquisition of Edward I. He further 

 gives early forms of Anglesea, Horningsea, and Whittlesea 

 (which he spells thus) in eye, and there is no doubt that 

 he is correct in stating that in all these names we have 

 the regular M.E. development of Old English eg, " island," 

 and not a form derived from O.E. ea, " river." 



Exactly how the peculiar change from the normal 

 -ey to the modern and irregular -ea arose it is difficult to 

 say, but the suggestion may be made that in names like 

 Whittlesey, Ram-sey, Horning-sey, the presence of the 5 

 in the middle of the name led to a piece of folk-etymolo- 

 gising whereby the words were divided as suggested by 

 the hyphen above inserted, the idea being that the 

 suffix was really the word sea, meaning " lake," and 

 referring to the neighbouring mere or fen. When once 

 this idea arose the spelling with final ea would soon be 

 introduced to confirm the idea. Later that spelling was 

 extended by analogy to other names like Eastrea, Manea, 

 Stonea, which had no medial 5. Ramsey and Thorney 

 are also ey names and were never, so far as the evidence 

 goes, even spelled with final ea. A. M. 



To the Editor of Discovery 



Dear Sir, 



In a letter of July 19, 192 1, of your issue I 

 note that the reason or purpose of the prehistoric cup- 

 markings is not understood. 



Whenever I have come across them in India (they 

 are fairly common), it always struck me that such de- 

 pressions in stones were produced by abrasion in pound- 

 ing grain. Only once I came across people actually 

 pounding their grain in these holes. Ordinarily they use 

 a stone mortar and pestle, the hole getting enlarged by 

 use. 



It will probably be found that in erecting dolmens 

 they used the slabs in which grain had been pounded. 

 The more stone abraded away, the easier to erect, and 

 the cup depressions were a guarantee of strength of the 

 material. 



Saucer-like depressions in stone occur all over India 

 where there is gold ; and it is worth noting that the 

 ancients never ground their ore in stone of the same 

 species out of which the gold had been extracted. For 

 instance, the grinding stones on the Kolar Gold Field 

 are always of granite or gneiss, and tliis rock lies away 

 from the old workings for gold. They used dolerite, 

 and they probably knew gold never was found in that 

 rock. 



Louis Stromeyer. 

 Coromandel P.O., 



K.G. Field, 



Mysore St.\te, S. India. 

 February 27, 1923. 



