TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 177 



may be referred to on this subject ; and there are said to be caverns in the Sayan 

 mountain-passes where some ancient people deposited their records and relics, 

 which have never been found or even searched for from the Russian side of the 

 country. It is to be remembered that the so-called Kirghiz of the Steppes of 

 North-western Asia have no affinities whatever with the Kirghiz here alluded to. 

 These, now nearly all Russian subjects, do not know the name, and are really 

 Kaisaks (Cossacks), roaming houseless waifs, and they are Turks. The Kirghiz 

 proper are now few in number, and are fast dying out, succumbing to the Cauca- 

 sians, probably the descendants of this very ancient people. 



Oti the Localities from whence the Gold and Tin of the Ancients were derived. 

 By Charles P. Groom Napier, F.G.S., M.A.I. 



The author said tin was known from historic evidence at least 1500 j-ears b.c. 

 Ho quoted Strabo with reference to the Phoenicians can-ying on traffic for tin from 

 Ciades and Bochart, who deduced the term Britain from liarab anac, the land or 

 field of tin. From the Phojnician inscriptions recently published in the journals 

 of the London Anthropological Societies and Institute, as having been found in 

 Brazil and Sumatra, he thought there was an early Phosuician intercourse with 

 these countries, and that metals might have been derived from them. Bochaii 

 thought Ophir might be in Peru. The author thought Ophir was a general name 

 for a gold-producing country. He reviewed the various theories with reference to 

 the location of Ophir, and mentioned the leading localities where the gold of 

 antiquity was said by ancient authors to have been procured. 



A new Pai'aqraph in Early English History, 

 By Dr. T. Nicholas, M.A., F.G.S. 



The author brought forward evidence, not before presented, to the effect that 

 the letter to Aetius the Roman Consul, ascribed by Gildas to the Britons of 

 Britain, and beginning, " The groans of the Britons," meant in reality a message to 

 the same effect sent to the same consul and in the same year by the Armoricans 

 who were even at that early date (a.d. 447) often called Britanni, and their 

 country Britannia (Bretagne). He quoted, in proof of his position, more especiallv 

 from the life of St. Germanus by Constantius, found in the 'Acta Sanctorum' 

 establishing from this contemporary document the reality of such a messao-e to 

 Aetius from the Armoricans in the year of his third Consulship (a.d. 447)"^ the 

 date of the pretended " letter " given by Gildas. The coincidence was so striking 

 as infallibly to suggest a blunder or a fraud on the part of Gildas, who was writ- 

 ing more than a century after the events, and, according to his own confession 

 without the aid of any British documents to supply him with facts, but from 

 foreign hearsay and obscure tradition. Whether Gildas was the victim of im- 

 posture, or himself played the impostor, and applied to his countrymen the Britons 

 what in reality belonged to the Britanni of Armorica, he is in either case equally 

 unworthy of credence as an authority in early English history. 



The Archaologiccd Discoveries in Kent's Cavern, Torquay. 

 By W. Pengellt, F.B.S. 



Note on a recent Notice of Brixlutm Cavern. By W. Pengellt, F.R.S. 



On the Worls, Manners, and Citstoms of the Early Inhabitants of the Mendips 

 By J. S. PnEN£, LL.D., F.S.A. 



In this paper the parallel evidence of various celebrated anthropologists, shown 

 in their discoveries, and the arguments deduced from such discoveries by men of 

 the highest scientific acquirements, were brought to bear upon the occupants of 



