1888. ] 135 [ Meyer. 
Also they scarcely seem to have been the result of conscious invention. 
Geoffrey of Monmouth was apparently a man of good character and a 
Bishop of the church. His position, therefore, seems to render it improb- 
able that he committed a complete literary forgery like that of George 
Psalmanazzar ; and if he did not, what was the origin of these tales? 
I conjecture, although I have very little proof to offer, that it may have 
originated something in this way. The Welsh chieftains were all fond 
of poetry, and kept in their service bards to sing their praises and that 
of their ancestors. Long genealogies were spun out connecting them 
with the great of the olden time. The license of song and verse would 
naturally increase the facility of invention. 
This poetry would gradually in an uncritical age become considered 
véritable history, and finally, clipped of its ornaments, be turned into 
sober prose, and make its appearance as authentic history. An enormous 
mass of Welsh poetry is, I believe, in existence, mostly unprinted, and 
it would be very interesting and instructive if some scholar learned in 
Welsh, and with access to the manuscripts, would examine if the legend- 
ary history of Britain did not originate in this manner. 
The same causes would explain the legendary history of Scotland, the 
darkness of which is incomparably greater than that of England. Indeed, 
it seems to me that with the exceptions of the glimpses afforded by the 
occasional notices of English chroniclers, nothing definite is known until 
about the time of Edward I of England. 
A long series of kings is given with the events of their reigns, yet no 
explanation is given of the change from a Celtic-speaking people to an 
English-speaking people, apparently about the year 1000 A. D. The low- 
lands of Scotland were a people who used Gaelic and were governed by 
kings with characteristic Celtic names of Macbeth, MacDuff, Duncan, 
Malcolm, and with institutions of the regular clan or tribal nature. But 
when the light of history becomes bright and clear, they speak a dialect 
of English, their institutions are of the feudal rather than the clan type— 
their kings and nobles have names either Teutonic or Norman in the ety- 
mology ; and yet of this great revolution there is not a word in history. 
On Miocene Invertebrates from Virginia (With Plate). 
By Otto Meyer, Ph.D. 
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, March 16, 1888.) 
Prof. J. J. Stevenson, of the University of New York, has collected a 
quantity of Miocene material near Yorktown, Va. In his collection there 
are quite a number of specimens of large species in fine preservation, 
like Mercenaria tridacnoides Lam. sp., Panopea reflexa Say, Ecphora 
