SIXTH ORDINARY MEETING. 43 



3. Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Nos. 6 and 7, June and 



July, 1884. 

 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LIII., Part II., No. 2, 1884, 



4. Mittheilungen der Anthropologische Gesellschaft in Wien, XIV. Band, 2 



und 3 Heft. 



5. Archivio per I'AntrojDologia e la Etnologia, Vol. XIV., Fascicolo Secondo 



Firenze, 1884. 



6. Soci6t^ des Ingenieur Civils, Stance du 7th November, 1884. 



Mr. F. J. Garden and Mr. Herbert L. Bowman were elected 

 members of the Institute. 



Dr. Daniel Wilson read a paper on " The Bohemian Skull," 

 which will appear in a subsequent fasciculus. 



Messrs. Buchan and Bain made brief remarks. 



A paper by Dr. Neil MacNish on " The Gaelic Topography 

 of Damnonia," was read for the author by Mr. VanderSmissen. 



THE GAELIC TOPOGRAPHY OF DAMNONIA. 



I propose in this paper to examine the Topography of that portion 

 of England which was at one time known as Dumnonia or Dam- 

 nonia. For the sake of convenience it may be maintained that 

 Damnonia embraced Devonshire, Cornwall, and the Scilly Isles. A 

 writer in the Encyclopcedia Britannica remarks that " Dumnonia or 

 Damnonia, the Latinized name of a kingdom which long remained 

 independent after the arrival and early conquests of the West 

 Saxons, seems to be identical with this Cymric Dyfnaint, which 

 survives in the present Devon. The Saxon settlers, as they ad- 

 vanced into the country, called themselves Defenas, i. e., men of 

 Devon or Dyfnaint, thus adopting the British name." Into Dyfnaint, 

 Devon, the Welsh word dwfn, Gaelic domhain, seems to enter as a 

 component part. Professor Rhys states, that the remains of the lan- 

 guage of the Dumnonii in Devon and Cornwall leave no kind of 

 doubt that they were of the earlier Celts or Goidels, and not Bry- 

 thons, I am of opinion that satisfactory evidence can still be ex- 

 tracted from the names of rivers and bays and headlands in the 

 ancient kingdom of Damnonia, to show that Celts, whose language 

 was Gaelic, gave in the distant past many of those topographical 

 appellations which, with various degrees of correctness, have come 

 doMTi to our own time. It may be safely affirmed that the names 

 which were given in an early age to the streams and lochs and hills 



