THE INSULATION OF ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT. U 
cester :—‘‘ Pope Gregory, in the year 1070,” granted to “the 
Church in the Mount of St. Michael in Tumba in the county 
of Cornwall . . . . that all the faithful who enriched the 
Church with their benefactions and alms, or visited it, should be 
forgiven a third part of their penances.” “ These words,” he 
continues, “were found in ancient registers lately discovered in 
this Church,” and “they are publicly placed here on the doors of 
the Church.”* 
Returning now to the first of these papers—that read to the 
British Association, at Birmingham, in 1865—it will be remem- 
bered that the point of my argument was, that the hypothesis of 
the Insulation by mere encroachment could not be admitted, be- 
cause it led to the conclusion that twenty thousand years ago the 
old British language was spoken in Cornwall, which was absurd. 
Unfortunately, the newspaper reporter, failing to see that I was 
using the reductio ad absurdum, witha delightful innocence, sup- 
posed, and informed the world, that I had contended for the 
twenty-thousand years antiquity of the Cornubo-British language. 
No one who reflects on the facts that scientific language is neces- 
sarily technical, and that newspaper reporters are rarely familiar 
with it, since it is seldom required in their profession, will be 
unprepared for errors of this kind; and every one who has watched 
newspaper reports of scientific papers or lectures must be ac- 
quainted with many examples of it. 
The first intimation which reached me of the error in the news- 
paper report of my paper was through the Rev. Dr. Bannister of 
St. Day, Cornwall, who, being so good as to send to Notes and 
Queriest a reply to questions I had asked in its pages, concluded 
thus:—“TI should like to ask Mr. Pengelly if he was correctly 
reported in the newspapers, which made him say at the Birming- 
ham Congress that ‘20,000 years ago Cornwall was inhabited by 
a Cornish-speaking people.’” Thinking the matter of little or 
no public interest, I sent Dr. Bannister a private reply, containing 
the true state of the case. 
The unfortunate newspaper report appears to have fallen into 
the hands of Prof. Max Miiller, who, less cautious than Dr. 
« Ttineraria. 
¢ 3rd Series, Vol. xi, pp. 357-8. May 4, 1867. 
