28 
The Presidential Address. 
Every schoolboy knows the traditions connected with the 
Druidical nature-worship, the sacred mistletoe on the sacred 
oak, and on the surrounding groves of only less sacred apple 
trees. I believe the apple to have been in cultivation ages 
before Alfred took refuge in the marsh-surrounded so-called 
“island” of Avalon, or apples. There was no doubt a 
certain community of superstition among all the Aryan 
nations. For instance, Taranis or Etirun was the British 
form of the Scandinavian Thor, the thunderer, and the wor¬ 
ship of oak, ash, hawthorn, and houseleek as sacred to him 
probably dates from Celtic, and not merely from early English, 
times. The Houseleek is not apparently wild anywhere 
nearer than the valley of the Loire, though grown much as 
with us in the North of France. The plant has several 
Celtic names, quite unlike those used by the English, 63 and 
whilst in Druidical times there may well have been communi¬ 
cation with France, this is perhaps less likely during the 
pagan period of the English conquest. 
We must not forget that between the paganism of pre- 
Boman Celtic Britain and that of Hengist and Ercemvine 
five centuries elapsed, during four of which the country was 
under a government which, if mainly military, cannot have 
existed, as it did, throughout the length and breadth of the 
land without great influence upon the natural condition of the 
country. An ear of Essex barley figures on the gold coin of 
Cunobelin, or Cymbeline, of Camulodunum, 64 before the 
date of this change is unknown. The great drain upon the wood¬ 
lands, which charcoal furnaces entailed, led to legislative action for 
their protection so early as 1543.”—Topley, ‘ Geology of the Weald,’ 
pp. 832-3. 
53 “ Son introduction, en Angleterre, doit remonter a une epoque tres 
ancienne, puisque les Gallois d Tile d’Anglesea lui donnent quatre norns 
d’apparence celtique, du rooms tres differents des noms saxons et latins, 
et auxquels je ne trouve d’analogie eloignee que dans les langues slaves, 
par exemple, Dislog (gallois), et Tschesnok dikoy (russe). Dans cette 
derniere langue, dikoy signifie sauvage; mais le mot Tschesnok est un 
nom propre.”—DeCandolle, op. cit., p. 662. 
54 These coins, one of which is figured, among other places, in ‘ The 
Students’ Hume,’ p. 8, have been found at Colchester, Debden, Chester- 
ford, Sandy (Bedfordshire), and Cambridge.—Akerman, ‘ Arclireologia,’ 
xxxiii. 
