2 THE INSULATION OF ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT. 
which, during the present year, he has printed in his Third Volume 
of “Chips.”* It was avowedly written to refute a conclusion to 
which the newspaper seems to have made me come and distinctly 
enunciate at Birmingham in 1865, but which, as is shown by 
the manuscript still in my possession, instead of advocating, I 
declared to be utterly untenable. The erroneous conclusion first 
ascribed to me by the newspaper, and then treated as mine by 
Professor Max Miiller, was subsequently reiterated by a critic 
- in the Saturday Review ;+ and, as it is well known to be diffi- 
cult, if not impossible, to overtake a misrepresentation, there 
can be little doubt that it may again and again be given as an 
instance of the danger of hasty conclusions. 
Such are the circumstances which have induced me to write 
this, my fourth, paper on The Insulation of St. Michael's Mount. 
In order to a clear understanding of the precise point on which 
Professor Max Miiller supposed himself to be at issue with me, 
it may be well at this stage to give a brief summary of my Bir- 
mingham paper, read in 1865. Having described the Mount and 
its position, I formally enunciated the following assumptions :— 
lst—That the Old Cornish Name of the Mount was Cara Clowse 
in Cowse. 
2nd—That the Name had been. correctly translated as The Hoar 
Lock in the Wood. 
3rd—That the Name was appropriate when it was first given. 
4th—(On the authority of Dr. Boase{ and Dr. T. F. Barham§)— 
That Florence of Worcester expressly stated that the Mount 
was formerly five or six miles from the sea, and enclosed 
with a very thick wood. 
Though fully aware that each of these assumptions might turn 
out to be untrue, I supposed them to have at least a fair amount 
of evidence in their favour, and therefore came to the inevitable 
conclusion that the insulation of the Mount must have taken place 
after the introduction of the old British language into Cornwall. 
No geologist can for a moment doubt that at a geologically very 
* Chips from a German Workshop, by F. Max Miiller, M.A., Vol. iii, 
pp. 830-357, 1870. 
{+ January 14th, 1871, p. 56. 
+ Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. of Cornwall, Vol. ii, p. 134. 
§ Ibid, Vol. iii, p. 105. 
