to London. Ella landed in Sussex in 177. It was not till 519 that Cerdic and his son Cynric obtained the kingdom of the West Sexna, and not till 547 that Ida ruled the Northumbrians. Except the kings of Wessex, who pushed their conquests to the Severn in 577, the others seem to have had little trouble in establishing themselves. In no instance is the capture of a large town recorded till 577, when Gloucester, Bath, and Cirencester fell into the hands of Cuthwin and Ceaulin. Not a single contest is mentioned as having occurred in England proper, including the Angles, Mercia, and Northumberland.

It is curious, too, that we find in the chronicle the same restriction of names as in the Latin writers. The Britanni are sometimes called Brettas, sometimes Walas, and sometimes Bretwalas. The Teutons to this day call the Italians Welsch, and this is the appellation applied to the Romans in the dark period of the empire. The other names are more uncertain. We have Angle, Engle, Angela, also Saxe, Sexna, and Saxna, and I am inclined to think that there were originally, distinct names for the continental and insular tribes, which were confounded when reduced into Latin forms.

But there is another work of Gildas besides his history,* which is in one respect most important, as it gives an account of the then state of Britain, and of five kings who are all addressed as being in the height of power and wickedness. "Britain," says he, "has kings, but they are tyrants; she has judges, but they are unrighteous ones, they prey on the innocent, and favour the robber. The crowd of prisoners in the gaols are there by treachery, not for crimes;" perjury and various great sins are represented as universal.

Constantine, whom he calls the tyrannical whelp of the unclean lioness of Damnonia, is accused of having murdered at the holy altar, and in their mother's arms, two royal youths, with their two servants, the very year in which he was writing. Aurelius Conanus is bid to remember the vain and idle fancies of his parents and brethren, together with the untimely death that befel them in the prime of their youth. He is said to be swallowed up in the filthiness of horrible murders and other crimes, and worse even than Constantine. Vortiporius, the foolish tyrant of the Demetians, the South Welsh, whose head is now growing grey, the wicked son of a virtuous king, is seated on a throne full of deceits, and

* Gilde Epistola, Mon. Historica Brit. p. 16.

from the bottom to the top stained with murders and other sins. Cuneglasus, the tawny butcher, (as in the Latin tongue the name signifies,) amongst other titles is called a bear, and the guider of the chariot which is the receptacle of the bear. He had raised a great war against his own countrymen; he had driven his wife away, and taken her sister, who it seems had before taken the vow of chastity. But the worst of the lot is Maglocunus, who is thus addressed :-"O thou dragon of the island, who hast deprived many tyrants as well of their kingdoms as of their lives, and though last mentioned in my writing the first in mischief, exceeding many in power, and also in malice; more liberal than others in giving, more licentious in sinning; strong in arms, but stronger in thy own soul's destruction, &c." He had at the beginning of his youth oppressed his uncle and his brave soldiers with sword, spear and fire; and at a later period he appears to have felt or feigned a wish to become a monk, but this was not to be. "Oh, how great a joy would the preservation of thy salvation have been to God, the father of all saints, had not the devil, the father of all castaways, as an eagle of monstrous wings and claws, carried thee captive away against all right and reason, to the unhappy band of his children!" He had murdered his own wife and his nephew, and married the wife of the latter, at whose suggestions these crimes had been committed; and yet this king had had the most eloquent teacher of all Britain. Lastly, he says, there are priests, but they are unwise; very many that minister, but many of them impudent; clerks, she hath, but certain of them are deceitful ravenous; pastors as they are called, but rather wolves prepared for the slaughter of souls; * * instructing the laity, but showing withal most depraved examples, vices and evil manners; * violently intruding themselves into the preferments of the church; * * wallowing in the puddle of wickedness after they have attained the seal of the priesthood or episcopal dignity, &c., &c.†

*

As a historian, Gildas shews himself miserably deficient, and his HISTORY is of little value. But in the EPISTLE we find him in another character, and bitter as his language is, and fierce as are his denunciations, he here speaks the truth fearlessly, and gives us a vivid picture of a most awful period. He warns as an old prophet might have done, king and priest, noble and citizen, of the terrible judgment that was coming upon them. The wicked

• Giles' Translation of Gildas-Bohn's Ant. Lib. p. 320. + Ibid, p. 344.

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ness that overwhelmed the Roman empire pervaded Britain, as well as every other portion of it, but the wickedness was essentially Roman; neither Engla, Sexna nor Celts, except with those limitations already pointed out. those who had made themselves parcel of the Roman government, had anything to do with it but to sweep it away from the face of the earth which it had polluted so long. Two of the kings are named as being of the Devonians and South Welsh, the others might belong to North Wales, Cumberland, and Strathclyde; but the people of the two last were of Teutonic blood. Whoever will read the 7th book of Salvianus of Marseilles, DE GUBERNATIONE DEI, will have no doubt that these cives Britones or Britanni, were the Roman provincials, the Romani of Salvianus.

We have seen in 369, that a Roman legion was sufficient, with the help of the Britanni, to put down the native party. At a later period, three ceols, which would hardly contain fifty men each, were enough to destroy utterly the Roman provincials. The Picti had already assumed their national appellations of English and Sexe, and the Britanni were soon lost in the primitive Cymry. The Roman empire was in a state of rapid and inevitable dissolution, and England had this advantage over the states of the continent, that her own children achieved her independence and nationality, and even then the foundations of her future greatness were laid.

ON THE SNOWS AND SNOW CRYSTALS OF THE WINTER 1854-55, AS OBSERVED AT WARRINGTON.

By Thomas Glazebrook Rylands, Esq.

(READ APRIL 26TH, 1855.)

My wish in preparing the following communication has been two-fold: to lay before you certain observations I have made during the past winter; and to attract more general attention hereafter to the richness and variety of what, with little license, may be called the "treasures of the snow."

I know no class of objects so easily accessible by every one, which at the same time offers equal attraction, and is capable of affording so large an amount of gratification to all classes of observers. At the hands of the British meteorologist, at least, this subject demands, as it deserves, a much more careful investigation than it has hitherto had. So few have been the snow observations made in this country, that it is impossible to say whether

common occurrence.

the large variety of crystals seen during the past winter are of rare or of Thus much, however, we may affirm, that the Polar snows have, up to this time, produced no crystals more complex or beautiful than the snows of our own climate, the difference being simply, that they are occasionally larger than our own. Captain Scoresby gives one-third of an inch as the diameter of the largest he figured during his several voyages to Spitzbergen and Greenland, which is rather smaller than one now recorded; but Sir Edward Belcher, in a letter to Mr. Glaisher, states that many crystals with radii an inch and more in length were seen by him in the Arctic seas.*

Captain Scoresby's work has been carefully examined, with the view of making a comparison between his observations and my own. This attempt has resulted in the conviction, that to render such observations practically valuable, a more definite statement of the atmospheric condition at the time, than he has furnished, must be recorded. Without this, the forms themselves alone can be compared, all conclusions of higher value being difficult, if not impossible.

In selecting from the multitude of forms seen, those of which drawings have been made, my aim has been to preserve such as I considered the typical modifications of the snow from which they were obtained, and so many as seemed necessary to shew the variation to which some of these types are subject. With one or two exceptions, the crystals were collected on a slab of plate glass, and were sketched while in that position. To shew that the process of sketching is not necessarily a hasty one, I may mention that at temperatures but two or three degrees below the freezing point, crystals have remained unchanged for from twenty to thirty minutes while under observation.

The lens used throughout was one of Mr. Ross's Coddingtons, the magnifying power of which is about twenty linear at six inches; it defines clearly, lines which cannot be more than the four or five thousandth of an inch in breadth. I found no practical advantage in using higher powers, but regard the constant employment of the same power as more important.

My only regret in producing these drawings is that they convey so feeble an idea of the exquisite beauty, and perfection of detail, seen in the Captain Scoresby's observations were confined to the months of April, May, and June. The season and locality of Sir E. Belcher's are not stated.

originals they have, however, been made with all the care I could command, and considering the difficulty of representing, by little more than diagrams, objects of so complex and delicate a character, are such, I believe, as may be relied on. None but perfect crystals were drawn; generally they were about the twentieth of an inch in diameter; when much larger or smaller the measurement of them is stated in the plates.

On taking a general view of the figures, it will be seen that the forms which enter into their composition are, the granular, acicular, and tabular; and that the last may be again divided into the circular, stellate, prismatic, and hexagonal. Further, it will be observed that the acicular forms in particular are sometimes winged or foliated, exhibiting leaf-like expansions, with toothed or irregular edges: and lastly, that in some the rays or primary branches spring from a central nucleus, while in others the centre is simple. Now by the use of these terms, together with about the same number, borrowed from botanical phraseology, I have found little difficulty in describing, in a few words, even complex crystals, so as to reproduce, in my own mind at least, an accurate idea of their peculiarities. My rule has been to separate the description of the nucleus from that of the ray, and to write the several forms as they occurred in succession from the centre of the former to the extremity of the latter. By this means a record has been secured of several specimens, under circumstances in which it was inconvenient or unnecessary to make drawings.

I am not aware that observations were omitted on any day when snow fell. Perfect crystals were seen on thirteen days, and it is somewhat curious that on every occasion except two, the best crystals fell at or about nine o'clock in the morning.

In the annexed table I have collected such meteorological results as seemed most important, and, added to this table, the abstract which follows of the notes made in my journal, conveys all the information within the limits of my means.*

The Warrington register unfortunately includes only the readings of the barometer, hygrometer, self-registering thermometers, and rain-gauges, together with the usual wind, cloud, and weather observations. But we are informed by Mr. Glaisher that "Doctor Smallwood, of Isle Jesus, Canada East, has traced an apparent connexion between the form of the compound varieties of snow crystals and the electrical condition of the atmosphere, whether negative or positive," and that he is engaged upon further experiments. Such a connexion is far from improbable; and it is to be hoped that ere long this important class of observations will be more generally made in England. present they are almost wholly confined to the Royal Observatory.

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