in the stream or current), Westra (the western island), etc. The Norsemen called the Orkneys the Nordreyjar; the Hebrides, the Southern Islands or Sudreyjar, a name which has been compressed into the odd dissyllable Sodor. The two sees of the Sudreyjar and the Isle of Man were combined in the twelfth century, and put under the Archbishop of Trondjhem, who appointed the Bishops of Sodor and Man down even to the middle of the fourteenth century. But, more, the enormous number of Norse names bears witness to the fact that the Shetlands, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man were not most useful dependencies of the Scottish crown, but jarldoms attached to the kingdom of Norway. And this was the case down to 1266. The test-word for the Norse settlements in Great Britain is the ending by. This appears in our language as byre (a cow-house), and in France as bue or boeuf. In the Danelagh, which lay between Watling Street and the river Tees, the suffix by has pushed out the Saxon ton and ham; and to the north of Watling Street we find six hundred instances of its occurrence, while to the south there is scarcely

one.

In Lincolnshire alone there are a hundred names of towns and villages which end in by. We find this ending in hundreds of names in Jutland and in Schleswig: in the whole of Germany there are not six. In Scotland we have the names Lockerby and Canonby, both in Dumfriesshire; in England we have Grimsby, Whitby, Derby, and many more; in Wales we have Tenby, and many other Norse names on the fiords that branch out of Milford Haven; while in France - that is, in Normandy - we have Criqueboeuf (or crooked town), Marboeuf (or market town), Quitteboeuf (or Whitby), Elboeuf (or old town), and many others.

The Norsemen have left their names on our capes, our arms of the sea, and our islands, as well as on our towns. Ness or naze is their favorite word for cape; and we have it in Fifeness, Sheerness, Foulness, Whiteness; the Naze in Essex; Dungeness, or Cape of Danger; Skipness, or Ship-Headland; Blancnez and Grisnez, on the coast of France; and a great many more. A ford, or fiord, is the Norwegian name for an arm of the sea up which ships can go, just as ford is the Saxon name for a passage across a river for men or for cattle. Both words come from the old verb faran (to go), the root of which word is found in far, fare, welfare, fieldfare, etc. We find the Norse meaning of ford in Wexford, Waterford, and Carlingford, in Ireland; in Milford and Haverford, in Wales; and in Deptford (the 'deep reach') on the Thames, and Oxford in England. Besides the Norse names for islands which we find in Scotland, in Thurso and Staffa (which is

the island of staves), we can discover many in England, generally with the spelling ea or y. Thus Anglesea is the Angles' Island; Battersea, St. Peter's Isle, in the Thames; Chelsea, the isle of chesel or shingle; and Ely is the Isle of Eels. But the most common form of this Norse word is simply a, and it is found in greatest abundance in Scotland. The Norse vikings were in the habit of retiring to one of the small islets off the coast during the winter months; and, when summer returned, they issued forth from them to resume their piratical cruises. These smal islands still bear Norse names, while the local names on the mainland are Celtic. We have scores of those names ending in a, as Scarba, Barra, Ulva, Jura, Isla, Ailsa, Rona, etc.

a

Just as we saw that ford had two meanings, one from its Norse, the other from its Saxon users, so the name Wick has two meanings, each testifying to the different habits of the two nations. With the Saxon a wick was an abode on land, house or a village; with the Norsemen it was a station for ships, a creek, an islet, or bay. The Norse vikings, or creekers,' lay in the vicks or wicks they had chosen, and sallied out when they saw a chance of a prize. The inland wicks are Saxon, and the abodes of peaceful settlers; the Norse wicks fringe our coasts, and were the stations of pirates. Of the latter kind we have Wick, in Caithness; Lerwick; Wyke, near Portland; Alnwick, Berwick, in Northumberland and Sussex; and Smerwick, or Butter Bay, in Ireland. The parliaments of the Norsemen were called things, and this name they have left in several parts of Great Britain. A small assembly was a Housething, a word we have in our own hustings; a general assembly of the people was an Althing; and the Norwegian parliament is to this day called the Storthing, or great council. These things met in some secluded spot, on a hill, an island, or a promontory, where no one could disturb the members. In the Shetland Isles we find the names Sandsthing, Delting, Nesting, etc.,

the seats of local things; while the spot for the general council of the island was called Tingwall. In Ross-shire, too, we find a Dingwall, and in Cheshire a Thingwall. In Essex the word takes the softened and flattened Saxon form of Dengewell. In the Isle of Man the meeting-place was called Tynwald Hill; and the old Norse thing (name and thing) has survived, without a break in its existence, since the time of the Old Norse kings, but the institution has died out in Iceland and in Denmark. The Three Estates of the Isle of Man meet every year on Tynwald Hill, and no laws are valid in the island until they have been duly proclaimed from the summit.

We can, moreover, trace the identity of the Norwegian occupation by the number of local Norse names, and the contrasts are sufficiently striking. In Lincolnshire there are about three hundred Norse names; in Yorkshire, about three hundred; in Bedford and in Warwickshire, only half a dozen.

So much for history in our local names, and one might have easily said a hundred times as much on the subject. But there is interest, for both young and older hearers, in details and in points that are of much smaller importance.

The open-eyed and open-minded teacher, who is always on the lookout for whatever will bring into connection and interest with his lessons, will not disdain even the slight assistance he will gain from the relative positions of places, and the names that have come from this. He tells his pupils, for example, that another name for the German Ocean is the North Sea; but he will surely go a step further than this, and show him that there is a South Sea also, which the Dutch call Zuyder Zee. Another step, and he will point out that the Germans call the Baltic the East Sea, and that the West Sea must of necessity be the Atlantic. In the same way, the Weser or Veser is the West River. In China this use of names of direction seems to reach its height: for there we have Pekin and Nankin, the northern and southern coasts; Peling and Nanling, the northern and southern mountains; Peho and Nanho, the northern and southern rivers; and Nanhai, the Southern Sea.

Thus

Even the simple epithets old and new lend some interest to the teacher's work in geography. The word old takes many forms: it appears as alt, elt, al, and ald, in Althorp, Eltham, Albury, Aldborough. New is an epithet, which, like every other thing on earth, must itself grow old. New Forest is one of the oldest forests in Great Britain; New college is one of the oldest colleges in Oxford, for it was founded in 1386; New Palace Yard, in Westminster, dates from the eleventh century; and the fifty-two New Streets in London are among the oldest in that vast wilderness of houses. There are in England 120 villages with the name of Newton, 10 towns called Newcastle, and 17 called Newbiggen. It is interesting, too, to observe the forms that the word new may take; as Neuf in Neufchatel, Nov in Novgorod, Ne in Neville, and Na in Naples or Neapolis.

Color, too, gives some interest to our geographical names. Thus Cape Verde is 'the cape fringed with green palms.' The local name for the Indus is the Nilab (or Blue River); and the mountains in the south of India are called the Nilgherrie (or Blue Mountains), a name which we find also in

Virginia. The city of Atria or Adria, from which the Adriatic took its name, is the black town,' because it was built upon the black mud brought down by the Padus. The Himalaya, or, as we call the range, the Himalaya, is 'the abode of snow ;' and Lebanon means the white mountain.' The word Apennines means the white heads;' Mont Blanc, Sierra Nevada, Ben Nevis, Snowdon, Sneebalten, Snaefell, and many other mountains, all have the same meaning. The word alp itself, being a form of albus, gives us the same indication; and connected with it are Albania, Albion, and Albany, which was the old name of Scotland.

With pupils of a more advanced age, it would be useful to show the identity of the Hindostani abad and the Hebrew beta with the English bottle (we have it in Newbattle and Bothwell) and bold, with the Slavonic Buda, and with the Cymric bod in Bodmin and Boscawen. Allahabad is 'the house of Allah;' Bethany, the house of dates ;' Bethlehem, 'the house of bread;' and Bethel, 'the house of God.'

6

We have seen that names throw light upon history, and that history throws light upon names; but names also throw light upon physical changes, and on the variations of climate that have taken place in this island. Thus we have in different parts of England places and parts of towns called Vineyard, where no vines can nowadays grow. Mr. Thompson, the eminent gardener, tells us that when he was a boy the island of Mull had many orchards of excellent apples, while now the whole surface of the island is not adequate to the production of a single eatable apple. He tells us, too, that at Hatfield, near London, the seat of Lord Salisbury, there used to be fourteen hundred standard vines, which produced the grapes that found the house in its supplies of wine; whereas now there is not a single grape produced except under glass. The name vineyard in Britain is therefore nowadays a name, and nothing more. There is, not far from Loch Maree, in Ross-shire, a farm that bears the name of Kinloch Ewe; that is, the head of Loch Ewe. But Loch Maree, or Mary's Loch, was, geologists tell us, at one time only one of the upper reaches of Loch Ewe; and this conclusion of geologists is borne out by the name Kinloch Ewe, which is not on Loch Ewe at all, but about a mile above the upper end of Loch Maree. But there can be no doubt that this farm marks the point to which the older Loch Ewe at one time extended.

Local names, too, give us evidence of animals that are now extinct in this island. The existence of the wolf and the bear in England is marked by such names as Wolfeslow in Herefordshire, and Barnwood in Gloucestershire. The wild boar, or

eofer, was found at Eversley, Evershot, and Everton; and the presence of the beaver is indicated by such names as Beverly, Beverstone, and Bevercoates.

Changes in our customs, too, are to be traced in old names. Two of the strongest marks of the importance of a town are to be found in the existence of a market, or the possession of a bridge over the neighboring stream. The Old-English verb ceapian (to buy) gives us the words cheap, goodcheap, dogcheap, chapman, chaffer, horsecouper, and chop; and it also gives us the prefixes chipping, chep, and kippen. Cheapside and Eastcheap were the old market-places of London; and into Cheapside, even to this day, run Bread Street (where Milton was born), Milk Street, and the Poultry. In the north of Europe we find Copenhagen, which means Chipping or Market Haven;' Nordkioping, which means • North Market; and many others.

6

Even the mistakes in names are full of suggestion. The readers of Sir Walter Scott's Pirate' know Fitful Head in Shetland as the abode of Norna. But Fitful Head, though a quite appro priate name, is a mere corruption, undoubtedly by mistake of the old Scandinavian name Hvit-fell (or White Hill). Cape Wrath, again, has in its oldest meaning nothing to do with storm, but, in its old Norse form of Cape Hvarf, simply indicates a turning-point, the point where the land trends in a new direction; and it contains the same root as the words wharf and Antwerp.

Many similar corruptions are to be found in England. The walk from Buckingham Palace to Westminster is now called Birdcage Walk, which is only a meaningful corruption of Bocage Walk; Chateau Vert, in Oxfordshire and in Kent, has been altered into Shotover Hill, and a legend about Robin Hood and Little John has been attached d; Beau Lieu, in Monmouthshire, has grown into Bewley; Grand Pont, in Cornwall, into Grampound; and Bon Gué (the good ford), in Suffolk, has been, too, naturalized into Bungay.

So far, we have seen that history and philology become the loyal servants of the teacher. Shall we be able to say the same of poetry? How shall the most brilliant outcome of the human intellect, the most inspired expression of the mind, the product of the noblest faculties, strengthened by and intertwisted with the deepest emotion, help our much study of the world?

of every large school and college. Such a collection contains, and must contain, a great deal of what is good, of what is indifferent; and we know that neither gods nor nor men columns tolerate the indifferent in poetry.

But let us choose that which is good, and hold fast to it. How does Longfellow introduce Edinburgh to us? We who know the city, and have loved it long, know that it is a poet's dream in stone, watched by the everlasting hills, looked in upon by the eternally-during sea, bowered in trees, intermingled with rocks and crags and cliffs, and possessing a history that no taint of doubt or cowardice has ever sullied.

How does Burns describe this world-famous

"Thy sons, Edina, social, kind,

With open hand the stranger hail;
Their views enlarged, their liberal mind,
Above the narrow, rural vale."

Sir Walter Scott sings of the city in other scenes,
and with the thought of war in his mind :
"Nor dream that from thy fenceless throne
Strength and security are flown;
Still, as of yore, queen of the north,
Still canst thou send thy children forth.
Ne'er readier at alarm bell's call
Thy burghers rose to man thy wall,
Than now, in danger, shall be thine,
Thy dauntless voluntary line;

For fosse and turret proud to stand, Their breasts the bulwarks of the land." Not inferior are the lines of Alexander Smith, whom many of us still remember : "Edina, high in heaven wan, Towered, templed, Metropolitan, Waited upon by hills,

River, and widespread ocean, tinged
By April light, or draped and fringed
As April vapor wills,

Thou hangest, like a Cyclop's dream,
High in the shifting weather-gleam.
"Fair art thou, when above thy head
The mistless firmament is spread;

But when the twilight's screen
Draws glimmering round thy towers and spires,
And thy lone bridge, uncrowned by fires,
Hangs in the dim ravine,

Thou art a very Persian tale,

Or Mirza's vision, Bagdad's vale."

Not less true, not less adequate, is the sonnet written by A. H. Hallam, the early-lost friend, in sorrow for whom Tennyson wrote his 'In memoriam:'

Thus should her towers be raised, with vicinage
Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets,
As if to vindicate, 'mid choicest seats

Of Art, abiding Nature's majesty ;

And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage,
Chainless alike, and teaching liberty."

But this side of the question would carry us too far. What I am driving at is a humbler aim. All through this statement I have been trying to insinuate, to suggest that the teacher should bring into all his lessons on geography the maximum of connection; that he should try to make the map live before his pupils; that in education, as in a statue, there should be no dead matter; and that the satisfaction of the day's curiosity, or mental appetite, should be followed by the growth of a stronger appetite still. I think that we who live in this latter part of the nineteenth century may congratulate ourselves on the immense amount of young active intellect that has thrown itself into education, and on the better methods that, with this youth and activity, have been imported into our schoolrooms. It is not so long ago that boys were kept for years over the As in praesenti and the Propria quae maribus before they were able to form a first-hand acquaintance with even the easiest Latin author: nowadays a boy does not learn a new word or a new inflection without being asked at once to build his new knowledge into an interesting sentence. Not long ago children were taught lists of names without seeing a picture, a diagram, a model, or a map, and this was called geography: now we have the geographical societies, both of Edinburgh and of London, working steadily for them, and showing them all that there is of beautiful and wonderful, and strange and thoughtful, in the life of man upon this remarkable planet.

Another point before I have done. The path of education is the path of discovery; it is not the dead-beaten road upon which you can sow no new seed, it is not the region of the second-hand, the fossilized thought, the mere traditionary and repetitional idea. If, then, the teacher is to make those old times live again, those old times that have left ineffaceable marks in our names of places, just as the underlying rocks have left traces of themselves in our soil, he must excite the curiosity of his pupils, and set them hunting for new examples of old names; must ask them to find the old in the new, and the new in the old. It is as true of education as of life, and the one is only an epitome and compressed symbol of the other, that for us all it is

Glad sight whenever new and old

Are joined through some dear home born tie:
The life of all that we behold

Depends upon this mystery."

The passion of hunting is the strongest passion

in human nature can we gratify this passion in the schoolroom? I think we can; and geography is one of the happy hunting-grounds in which we may be able to gratify it.

DR. CHARLES A. POWERS of New York contributes an article to the Medical record, giving the results of his treatment of twenty-one cases of injury by the toy pistol, and states that two deaths this year from this cause have come to his knowledge. In by far the greater number of cases the palm of the hand was the seat of the injury, although some had received injuries to the fingers, the eyelid, or the abdominal wall. The wounds varied in depth from one-quarter of an inch to two inches, and were due to wads from the blank cartridges or to pieces of the percussion caps which were blown into the tissues. The injured parts became inflamed, pus formed, and in many cases a septic condition of the blood followed, eventuating in some cases in tetanus and death.

- The official returns of the minister of education in Prussia show that the number of students in philology, philosophy, and history, in this home of the philosophical sciences, has been steadily declining from Michaelmas, 1881, to Easter, 1885; the numbers for the six sessions being 2,522, 2,535, 2,504, 2,398, 2,311, 2,258, 2,181. In three years and a half the decline in the number of philosophical students is thus fourteen per cent.

- Instances are not infrequently recorded in medical journals of the passage of needles and pins from one part of the body to another. In a recent case a needle one inch and a quarter long, which had been swallowed some months before, was removed from the arm of a bricklayer.

A woman in Russia recently consulted a physician on account of a peculiar deformity from which she suffered. It consisted of a projection at the lower end of the spine which formed a tail two inches long, and half an inch wide. It contained two vertebrae, and these were covered with fat, hair, and skin.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1886.

COMMENT AND CRITICISM.

by the physician, who, in his busy professional life, cannot make the observations as to the temperature, pulse, and respiration of his patient as often as he would like, or as the welfare of the patient demands. In all these methods, nurses are now trained, and their services are well-nigh indispensable. A trained nurse is, however, an expensive luxury, three dollars a day being the usual price paid them; so that only the rich can enjoy their educated aid. What is greatly needed in our cities is an organization which will supply such succor to the poor, by whom such services are in reality more needed than by the rich. Every physician whose practice has taken him into tenement-houses has felt the great need of some one to nurse his patients, when, through ignorance or poverty, neither they nor their friends can do any thing to aid him. In Philadelphia a district nurse society has been formed for the care of the sick poor who cannot be sent to the hospital. trained nurse is provided by this society to visit and attend the sick. Bed-linen and other necessaries are also furnished. For these services a charge of five cents a day is made, except when the patient or his relatives cannot afford to pay any thing, in which case every thing is furnished without recompense. The motive which underlies this system is an admirable one, and we shall watch the working of the plan with great interest.

A

THE BEST METHOD for the disposal of garbage has been a subject of discussion among sanitarians for many years. There is no one system which is equally applicable to all places. In small villages it may with safety be utilized as food for hogs, if proper facilities for the keeping of these animals exist; but, where there is a population of any considerable magnitude, pig-keeping should be discouraged, and, if need be, prohibited. In small families the kitchen refuse can be burned in the range; but in large families, hotels and restaurants, this method of garbage disposal is usu

No. 193.-1886.

which the garbage-collector can go, and remove the refuse from the rear of the buildings, and thus avoid carrying the offensive material through the dwelling. In New York and Brooklyn such an arrangement of streets does not exist, and the garbage must therefore be brought through the hallways of the houses. In New York garbage and ashes are placed in the same receptacle, and removed together. In Brooklyn they are removed separately. One of the most disagreeable sights in these two cities is the long line of ash-barrels which line the streets on ash days.' Brooklyn is about to make this still more disagreeable by compelling the householder to place his garbagevessel, usually a soap-box or a tin pan, on the sidewalk in front of his dwelling, there to remain until the proverbially dilatory 'swill-man' comes along to collect it. As this is to be done twice and three times a week, according to the season, the Brooklyn streets will be any thing but attractive to the foot-passenger. There can certainly be but one advantage claimed for this plan, and that is the reduced cost; but, unless we are much mistaken, the nuisance which will result will make a change imperative.

WE HAVE ALREADY REFERRED to the new objective invented by Professor Abbé of Jena. The German government appropriated fifteen thousand dollars for experimental purposes; and after five years of work, Professor Abbé produced this new objective, which, it is claimed, more perfectly corrects spherical and chromatic observation than any hitherto manufactured. Some of the lenses in the combination are of siliceous glass, while the others contain borax and phosphorus. The mechanical part of the work was done by Zeiss. We extract the following description of the objective from the Journal de micrographie, by Dr. van Heurck: “The objective is homogeneous immersion, of a focal distance of three millimetres,