of race (e.g. the adoption of a Romance tongue by the Gauls); much less is it decisive in such an instance as the adoption of English by the Lowlanders of Scotland.  In striking contrast to the case of England, the victory of the Anglo-Saxon speech in Scotland did not include the adoption of English place-names.  The reader will find the subject fully discussed in the valuable work by the Reverend J.B.  Johnston, entitled Place-Names of Scotland.  “It is impossible”, says Mr. Johnston, “to speak with strict accuracy on the point, but Celtic names in Scotland must outnumber all the rest by nearly ten to one.”  Even in counties where the Gaelic tongue is now quite obsolete (e.g. in Fife, in Forfar, in the Mearns, and in parts of Aberdeenshire), the place-names are almost entirely Celtic.  The region where English place-names abound is, of course, the Lothians; but scarcely an English place-name is definitely known to have existed, even in the Lothians, before the Norman Conquest, and, even in the Lothians, the English tongue never affected the names of rivers and mountains.  In many instances, the existence of a place-name which has now assumed an English form is no proof of English race.  As the Gaelic tongue died out, Gaelic place-names were either translated or corrupted into English forms; Englishmen, receiving grants of land from Malcolm Canmore and his successors, called these lands after their own names, with the addition of the suffix-ham or-tun; the influence of English ecclesiastics introduced many new names; and as English commerce opened up new seaports, some of these became known by the names which Englishmen had given them.[7] On the whole, the evidence of the place-names corroborates our view that the changes were changes in civilization, and not in racial distribution.

We now proceed to indicate the method by which these changes were effected, apart from any displacement of race.  Our explanation finds a parallel in the process which has changed the face of the Scottish Highlands within the last hundred and fifty years, and which produced very important results within the “sixty years” to which Sir Walter Scott referred in the second title of Waverley.[8] There has been no racial displacement; but the English language and English civilization have gradually been superseding the ancient tongue and the ancient customs of the Scottish Highlands.  The difference between Skye and Fife is that the influences which have been at work in the former for a century and a half have been in operation in the latter for more than eight hundred years.