exist between the two crystalline segments of the double eye of anableps tetrophthalmus, the singular disposition of which was the subject of an interesting memoir by M. de Lacepede.9 Lenses of the cephalopoda. The solidity of the nucleus formed of phaconine is not the exclusive characteristic of the lenses of fish, but rather of those animals who live exclusively in water. The lenses, for example, of cephalopoda have the same composition as those of fish. The cortical layers are albuminous; the nucleus is solid, and composed exclusively of phaconine. In thus proving an absolute identity between the lenses of fish and those of aquatic mollusca, the authors have established a very curious physiological fact, namely, that the composition of the crystalline lens depends upon the medium in which the animal is to live. In examining the lenses of cephalopoda an interesting fact was discovered, which had not been hitherto noticed by any anatomist, namely, that the lens is composed of two unequal and perfectly distinct segments. In the Loligo pavo, the larger segment is more concave than the other, and is always the posterior one. The upper meniscus is perfectly distinct from the posterior one; they may be separated by the slightest shock, and a section of the lens exposed. The cortical layers are formed of albumen coagulable by heat; the nucleus containing phaconine is disposed in concentric layers differently coloured. The authors are desirous of directing the attention of those physicists who occupy themselves with the determination of the direction which the luminous rays follow in traversing the humours of the eye, to this extraordinary structure of the eye, which is the same in all the cephalopoda. A curious application of the author's researches may be mentioned; they discovered that the transparent bodies found in place of the eyes of some mummies, brought from a tumulus near Arica in Peru, were the lenses of cephalopoda. They attempt to determine the nature of the eyes of the garden snail, slug, etc., and of those more singular ones which constitute the numerous occuliform and brilliant points which exist between the cilia and the tentaculæ of several acephalæ, such as Pecten maximus and Pecten jacobæus, etc. All these small eyes appeared to have a kind of small crystalline lens, which hardened on being boiled; but these corpuscles are so small, that they have reserved them for future investigation. The whole of the results may be summarized as follows: 1o. That the crystalline lens of a mammalian animal is formed of fibres, insoluble in water, and united at the centre by an albuminous substance, coagulating at about 65°, but becoming transparent and amber-like by the prolonged action of alcohol, and united exteriorly by an albuminous body non-coagulable by boiling under the conditions indicated, not becoming blue by the action of hydrochloric acid, and which has been called metalbumen. The singular disposition of the eye of anableps tetrophthalmus, or lobitis anableps, as it was formerly called, to which the authors allude, is the division of the cornea and iris by transverse ligaments, and the existence of two pupils, giving the appearance of a double eye, while there is only one crystalline humour, one vitreous humour, and one retina. This extraordinary fish is found in the rivers of Guyana and Surinam. See Lacepede, Mém. de l'Institut. National, t. ii., p. 372. 2°. That these two substances, anatomically distinct, and constituting two different parts of the lens of a mammalian animal, should be distinguished by special names; the name endophacine is accordingly proposed for the central portion, and exophacine for the external layers. 3°. That the crystalline lens of birds, reptiles, and batracians, differs very little from those of the mammalia. 4°. That the lens of fish is likewise formed of two distinct parts; the one, cortical, or exophacine, is composed of metalbumen; and the other, or nucleus, is formed of an albumenoid substance, solid and insoluble in water, and called phaconine. 5o. That the fibres of the lens of the mammalia, united by albumen or by metalbumen to form the endophacine or exophacine of the lens, have considerable analogy with the phaconine of fish. Morbid alteration of the crystalline lens. The authors have made some exceedingly interesting and important observations on the alterations which lenses undergo when they become opaque from the effects of disease, as, for instance, cataract. The observations were chiefly made on the lens of the horse, which, as is well known, is sometimes affected by this disease. They discovered that in this case the lens suffers a modification which resembles in a certain degree that which has been observed to take place when a lens is exposed to the action of alcohol or boiling water. The albumen and metalbumen which constitute the healthy lens of a horse, become, by the action of the disease, insoluble in water, and form slightly opaque membranes, which may be readily separated from one another. This modification is not due, as has been supposed, to phosphate of lime, which would modify the properties of the albumen; but, on submitting these membranes to analysis, it was found that they did not leave more ash than ordinary albumen. [I made, on two or three occasions, some analyses of lenses affected with cataract, which corroborate in a most striking manner the views of MM. Valenciennes and Fremy upon that disease contained in the preceding memoir. The lens was carefully weighed, dried in a water bath, then in an oil bath heated to a temperature of 130°, weighed, then incinerated, and the ash weighed ; in no case did I find that the per-centage of ash, and especially of phosphates, exceeded that of a lens quite free from disease. The condition in which I received the specimens was such as to preclude the possibility of my obtaining any accurate results as regards the per-centage of water; nevertheless, I may observe, without desiring to attach much importance to the circumstance, that the diseased lens appeared to always contain more water than healthy ones. It may be well to observe, however, that healthy lenses exhibit a variation in the per-centage of water, within certain limits. It would be interesting to discover whether the opacity of the lens in disease, is the result of increased hydratation.-W. K. SULLIVAN.] ETHNOLOGY. 12.-On the Inhabitants and Dialect of the Barony of Forth, in the County of Wexford. By VERY REV. C. W. RUSSELL, D.D., President of St. Patrick's College, Maynooth.10 [Communicated by the Author.] Among the minor curiosities of the ethnographical map, one of the most interesting is the occasional occurrence, in the centre of one of the great families of language, of some fragment of another and entirely distinct tongue, which is found to have maintained itself in complete isolation, in vocabulary, in structure, and inflexions, from that by which it has been, perhaps for centuries, surrounded. All the more prominent examples of this phenomenon-as that of the Basque cropping up in the midst of the Italo-Pelasgic group; of the Ossete in the centre of the Caucasian; and the Samoyede in that of the Tartaro-Mongol-have already been the subject of much learned speculation. I allude at present to certain less known and less striking, though, in some respects, hardly less instructive instances, in which the affinities of the intruder with the group amidst which it is found are closer and more appreciable. Such, for example, is that of the well known German dialect of the Sette Communi of Verona, and the Tredici Communi of Vicenza-descendants of the few stragglers of the Cimbrian expedition into Italy, who nearly two thousand years ago, escaped from the almost total extermination of their army under Marius; or the converse example of the Latin vocabulary and the Latin forms, which have been preserved in the Romani languages of Wallachia, since the days of the Latin colonies planted upon the Danube under the early Roman emperors. The object of the present essay, however, is not to trace the history of these foreign anomalies, but to bring under the notice of the Section a domestic example of the same singular phenomenon, which, although well known in Ireland, has received but little attention elsewhere, and which, even in Ireland, has never been thoroughly discussed: I mean the peculiar dialect which, up to the last generation, continued to be commonly spoken in the baronies of Forth and Bargie, in the County of Wexford. A paper on the subject of this dialect, accompanied by a metrical specimen and a short vocabulary, was printed by General Vallancey in the second volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, and it is alluded to by several writers; but I am not aware that any regular attempt has been made to analyze its elements, or to investigate its character. Vallancey is content to represent it as the ordinary English of the period of the Invasion, preserved unaltered by the descendants of the original colony. But a more common, and in Ireland a more popular opinion, looks upon it as of Flemish origin, or at least, as exhi 10 Read at the Dublin Meeting of the British Association, August, 1857. biting the Flemish element in a very high degree. I purpose, in the following observations, to submit for the consideration of the Section whatever lights upon the question appear to me to be derivable, first, from the history of the colony, and secondly, from the vocabulary and structural or grammatical analysis of the dialect itself. 1. The origin of the colony presents no difficulty. All writers upon Irish history, local and general, agree in considering it as a settlement of the first adventurers, who, in 1169, accompanied the expedition of Strongbow, Fitzstephen, and Maurice Fitzgerald, to Ireland, and to some among whom lands were assigned in the district now known under the name of the baronies of Forth and Bargie. This little band consisted of one hundred and forty knights, and three hundred infantry. The latter, being followers of Strongbow and Fitzstephen, may be presumed to have been recruited in Glamorganshire and Pembrokeshire; and one of the main foundations of the hypothesis of the Flemish character of the language of their descendants is derived from this circumstance. The population of these counties was at that time a very mixed one, consisting not only of Welsh, but also of English, of Normans, and of other foreign adventurers. Among these were a large number of Flemings who had been settled in Wales for nearly half a century previous to the invasion. A terrific inburst of the sea in 1107, and again in 1113, had laid waste the seaboard of the Low Countries, and had driven a considerable body of Flemings for refuge to England, with which country, since the marriage of Matilda, daughter of Baldwin of Flanders, with the Conqueror, a close connection had been maintained. With the English peasantry, however, these foreigners were from the first so unpopular, that the king, Henry I., found it expedient to collect them all into one settlement around the present Haverfordwest, in Pembrokeshire, where they were joined by a subsequent immigration of their fellow-countrymen, who came over as military adventurers in the reign of Stephen I., in 1138. These Flemish settlements had their centre in the south of Pembrokeshire and the south-west of Glamorganshire, in that peninsula west of Swansea Bay, still known as the Gower district; and that they engaged in considerable numbers in the invading expedition under Strongbow, is inferred from the number of seemingly Flemish names, such as Connick, Colfer, Godkin, Bolger, Fleming, Furlong, Waddick, Ram, Scurlock, Rossiter, Prendergast, Wadding, Codde, Lambert, Parle, and others, which are still to be found in different parts of the county of Wexford, but especially in these baronies of Forth and Bargie. On a closer examination, it is true, this evidence will be found in part illusory. Of the names on which it is founded, some, as Ram and Godkin, are certainly of a date far later than the Anglo-Irish invasion. Others, as Rossiter, Lambert, Prendergast, however Flemish in appearance, are unquestionably Norman or English. Mr. Herbert Hore, of Pole Hore, however, in a learned paper in the Archæologia Cambrensis (New Series, iii. 127), clearly proves the Flemish origin of many of the Wexford families. A roll of Wexford men, summoned for military service in 1345, cited by him, And on the whole it is contains several unmistakably Flemish names. impossible to doubt that the original settlement in the baronies of Forth and Bargie, contained a considerable infusion of that Flemish element which already existed in the population of Pembrokeshire and Glamorganshire. With the view of ascertaining the proportions of the two races at present, I addressed a sheet of printed queries to the clergy of the two baronies, but unfortunately the time was too short to permit any exact conclusions. Thus much, at least, is certain: that a large majority of the names is Norman or English, as Stafford, Devereux, Barry, Hore, Browne, Gifford, Lambert, Roche, Hay, Whitty, Mitton, etc., some of which are still popularly known by the hereditary character embodied in the rhyme : Stiffe Staffort, Dugged Lamport, Leighen a-Chiese, Proud Derouze, Stiff Stafford. Gentleman Browne. II. But secondly, even were it certain that the Flemish element had preponderated in the population at the time of the original settlement, it may be doubted whether that circumstance could be regarded as conclusive in deciding how far the same element was actually introduced into the language of the colony. It would yet remain to be inquired whether the Flemings of Wales themselves at that period still retained their native language in its integrity. Now, it must be recollected, not only that the Flemings were not the only foreigners then settled in Wales, but also that the Welsh colony of Flemings was, by this time, at least in its second generation. We know, too, that even at the first settlement, Henry I. sent English colonists among them to teach them the English language; and so successful was this policy, that, as early as the time of Higden, it is said of their descendants that "dimissâ jam barbarie Saxonicé satis loquuntur”(Higden, Gale's Ed., p. 210). This Pembrokeshire colony, indeed, was so eminently English, that it was known under the name which Camden himself renders, "Anglia Transwallina"-"Little England beyond Wales". The most, therefore, that can certainly be presumed of the original language of the adventurers who settled in Forth and Bargie, is that the form of English which they introduced contained a certain portion of the Flemish element. But, whatever was the precise character of the language of these colonists, authorities agree that their descendants preserve, with singular fidelity, not only this language, but also many peculiarities of manner, of social and domestic usage, and even of costume. The most notable of these were maintained in full observance down to the generation before the last, and are well remembered by many old persons still living in the baronies. In the seventeenth century they were almost universal. |