70 



conclusion ; and it appears that many of the stations of the Asturian 

 Flora, where plants are actually found, were also trading or fishing sta- 

 tions of Asturian or Biscayan mariners. It is also remarkable, that 

 one of the Plants of the Asturian Flora has been observed in other parts of 

 Northern Europe — namely, Belgium and the islands off* the coast of Fries- 

 land, districts where the Spaniards had considerable intercourse before the 

 Netherlands had finally achieved their independence. The winter cli- 

 mate of the Netherlands was probably not sufficiently favourable to the 

 development of the other Plants belonging to' the Asturian Flora, and 

 these are therefore confined only to those parts of Ireland where all the 

 physical and social causes favouring their growth have long existed in a 

 sufficiently high degree of intensity. 



XVI. —Note on the Irish Glosses recently eound in the Library 

 of Nancy. By Henri Gaidoz. 



[Read June 10, 1867.] 



There have been recently found some old-Irish Glosses, written on the 

 inside of the cover of a Manuscript, in the Library of Nancy. M. 

 D'Arbois de Jubainville, the scholar by whom they were discovered, has 

 published them in the " Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes," of June, 

 1866. This eminent French palaeographer considers that they are of 

 the ninth century. It is impossible to say from what volume was taken 

 so small a piece of parchment, which was judged of so little importance 

 as to be used in the binding of another manuscript. We may suppose, 

 however, that this leaf came either from Luxeuil in the Vosges, 

 or from one of the numerous monasteries to which religion and learning 

 were brought from the Isle of the Saints. 



These Glosses, unfortunately few in number, belong to a treatise on 

 the computus (i. e., Chronological Pules — vid. Ducange). M. D'Arbois 

 de Jubainville has only printed them-. I shall try to translate them as 

 far as I am able. 



The first is : dotos cidlae saecht fora mbi Kl. Jan. Dotos is certainly 

 an abbreviation for dotoscelad, which was found in a similar formula 

 by Zeuss : dothoscelad ais esci bis for hi. each mis (" Grammatica 

 Celtica," p. 1074). I assume this toscelad to ~be the same as the modern 

 taisceallad. Cid is the interrogative pronoun, of which many instances 

 are given by Zeuss (p. 361). Lae is an old nominative of la, day. Ac- 

 cording to Pictet, this word is found in none of the Indo-European lan- 

 guages, with the exception of the Laghmani language of Cabul, which 

 furnishes us with lae, day ("Origineslndo-Europseennes," II. p. 588, n.) 

 I suppose that in the MS. there was a stroke on the t of saecht, as on 

 the secht of the fifth gloss. It is for saechtmaine or sechtmaine (cf. 

 Zeuss, p. 280.) Sechtmaine is, according to Ebel ("Beitraege zur 

 vergleichenden Sprachforschung," IV., p. 378), the genitive of an 



