THE president's ADDRESS. 181 



in the library of Mr. Freeth, of Duportli. Nay, by observing the 

 mode in which this (though it is not mentioned) has been drawn 

 upon for the construction of a genealogical chart inserted in a 

 recent History of Cornwall, I am able to indicate the contingencies 

 which would be likely to befal the name in the process of tran- 

 scription. Though it nowhere speaks of the subject of these 

 remarks, it has notices of a couple of deeds in which several 

 earlier members of his family are named ; one, is an abstract, 

 replete with details, of a marriage- settlement of the date of 1593, 

 which the marginal note " Or iff : penes me T. T." shows to have 

 been made directly from the original document, old, even in his 

 day, by Tonkin himself ; of course with the retention of the 

 names as therein spelt. In it, though the elate is not cited, the 

 will of the principal's grandfather, lohn lagowe, is referred to, 

 and her own and widowed mother's surname spelt like his. 

 The other is an extract of a lease granted in 1587 to her mother 

 and a brother jointlj', in which the surname is written similarly, 

 but bereft of the E. One would have conjectured that the com- 

 piler of a pedigree, whether delving for its oldest trace or oldest 

 spelling of the name, would have esteemed the first mentioned 

 entry of Tonkin of more interest and more authoritative than 

 the other, yet he says nothing of its lohn lagowe, or its spellings, 

 and begins his tree by importing a statement from the second, 

 and editing it as to the surnames of his daughter-in-law and 

 grandson literally to the very w, except that, in each instance, 

 he represents the initial I by a J. 



Hence, not to dwell on the collateral authority, we have 

 here an example to teach us how, by a series of misadven- 

 tures or prepossessions in the minds of successive writers, a 

 name may continue to circulate into the future spelt otherwise 

 than was customary with the owner, nothwithstanding the 

 beckoning remonstrance in his own signature, and a voice from 

 his tomb. 



There are certain misuses of literary references which no 

 phase of the word negligence will suffice to characterize. In 

 the Annual Report of this Institution for 1853, there is a short 

 paper of mine, thus headed: " The Eustachian Tube, why opened 

 in Deglutition, now first rightly explained." This tube, I may 

 say, connects the tympanum or drum of the ear with the throat. 

 In 1867, the substance of this paper was embodied in an article 



