this was lined and roofed with stone, and then that the sand was piled over the stone roof to the level of the surrounding ground for warmth and concealment. I think it is evident that the place was inhabited, from the traces of food and fire found therein.

The bones were splintered, probably to get at the marrow, and all the shells are of edible kinds. The quern would indicate some knowledge of agriculture, but animal food and shell fish seem to have been chiefly used. The absence of implements would indicate a low state of civilisation, and the natural dryness of the bones remote time. I have no opinion to advance regarding the probable age or builders of the structure which I have thus endeavoured to describe.

Mr. Campbell of Islay informed me that the Laplanders who bring their deer to the sea shore in the north of Norway, construct their dwellings thus:-Into the face of a sand bank, with a green sward above, and near the sea, a passage is cut. At the head of this passage a round pit is dug, about four feet deep and twelve wide. From the edge of this shallow circular sand pit, a conical frame-work of sticks and branches is raised. Over this frame-work, turf is laid, and sand is piled over the turf. Grass soon grows over the roof, and the house becomes a green mound, with a smoke-hole through the top, which in Gaelic is called fairleus, sometimes corrupted farlos. The fire is made on the middle of the floor, and the inmates of the house sleep upon deer skins with their heads to the sand wall and their feet towards the fire. They live upon animal food. They break the bones, suck the marrow, and then throw the bones to their dogs, by which they are gnawed. A stone lining, added to this Lapp dwelling, would make something like the subterranean structure previously described. And thus it is that the present habits of a far-away country may serve to illustrate those of the far away times of our own. According to Sir John Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," the Australian manufactures flint flakes, the counterpart of which I found four weeks ago among disintegrated gneiss, fallen from the roof of a partly artificial recess in an immense subterranean natural cave in Pabbey, one of the southern isles of Barra.

NOTE on HEATHEN CEREMONIES still PRACTISED in LIVONIA, RUSSIA. Communicated by the Baron de BOGOUSCHEFSKY through Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., F.R.S.

I PROCEEDED, according to your order, to the holy oak on the rivulet Micksy, which forms the division between the Govern

ments of Pskov and Livonia. There I found a great assemblage of people, mostly the so-called Poluvertzi (i. e., Tchudi or Esthonians, who were formerly Lutherans, but were afterwards re-baptised into the Orthodox Church), with their families, in gala dress the men in kaftans (overcoats) of grey home-spun cloth, ornamented with designs stitched on the collar and at the girdle in woollen thread of various colours; the women in their long white cloth mantles with round and bell-shaped brass buttons sewn all along the seams in front, wearing on their heads ties of white linen with red edges, the long ends ornamented with fringes tied behind and hanging half way down the back. They were either seated on the grass or standing around the oak (which is a half dried, scorched, miserable specimen of the oak). Many of them had brought wax candles (or tapers) with them, and were fixing them all around the tree and on its branches.

After waiting some time, his reverence the Priest of Taylovo arrived, assumed the sacred robes, and proceeded to sing a "moleben" (a kind of canticle or hymn of prayers which is sung in the Orthodox Church in honour of various saints), saying instead of the usual "Holy Saint, pray the Lord for us," " Holy Oak Hallelujah pray for us," etc. After this, incensing the oak tree all round, reading the Bible, viz., as is done in the ordinary "molebens" to Saints; and then the priest gave the cross to be kissed by the people. During mass the tapers were lighted on the oak tree, the people throwing themselves on the ground and adoring the Holy Oak, the priest partook of some of the fare offered to him by the congregation, collected some money and still more cakes of rye flour baked with and without potato, and then proceeded homewards.

The people remained till late at night, drinking wine (vodka spirits), eating cakes, lighting new tapers on the oak tree, dancing, and otherwise amusing themselves, until at last everybody got tipsy, and a regular "orgie" continued, until all thought it best to retire home.

There is in this spot also a holy stone somewhere which is worshiped at the same time, but I could not see it, and did not venture to appear a stranger to the ceremony by asking questions as to where it was.

(Signed) JAMES PIGGUL, Steward of the Estate Panikovitz.

The Director read the following paper:

The WESTERLY DRIFTING of NOMADES from the FIFTH to the NINETEENTH CENTURY. BY HENRY H. HOWORTH. Part XI. The BULGARIANS.

THE name Bulgarian fills a notable place in the annals of the Byzantine Empire. Among the scourges of the Roman frontier the Bulgarians took a front rank. The name is not unknown in modern history. By it the young and progressive Slavic race that occupies Thrace and forms a material element in that congery of difficulties, "the Eastern question," is now known. Not the least strange among vicissitudes of nomenclature is the fact that the name of a tribe of Turanian nomades should designate in modern times a stout race of Arians with hardly a trace of Turanian mixture.

It will be profitable to occupy a short space in disentangling the difficulties that surround Bulgarian ethnology, and in throwing some more light on the crooked subject of the affinities of the nomades who overthrew the Roman empire.

The older

A few words first about the name Bulgarian. writers explained it as the dwellers on the Volga, but a very slight criticism proves this to be a faulty derivation, the name Volga being a very modern one, and probably derived from the Bulgarians. Herodotus seems to have confused the Volga and the laxartes, to both of which he gave the name Araxes. In the later classical times the Volga was well-known, and was then called Rha. Ptolemy so calls it in the second century. Agathemerus in the third century calls it Rhos. Ammianus

Marcellinus calls it the Rha. This name Rha is still given to the river by some of the Finnic tribes, and it is very probable the Greeks derived it from such a source. With the advent of the Turks into Europe, we get a new name for the Volga. Menander, who describes their first arrival, calls the Volga the Attila. Etel Itil or Idel is the name the Turks give it, meaning, in their language, river or great river; thus they talk of the Iaik Idel, Tana Idel, Tcholman Idel (the Kama); the Volga they called Ulug Idel i.e. great river, or simply Idel, and this is the name we find given to the Volga in the Byzantine historians. Ahmed Ibn Fozlan is the earliest Arab author who names the great river. He describes the city of Bolghar as being situated on the river Itil. Ishtakri, Ibn Haukal and Masudi all call it the Itel; the latter also names it the river of the Khazars. Edrisi calls it the Russian river. The later Arabs, such as Ibn Batuta, Ibn Fozlan, etc., recur to the old name of Itel or Atel.

The mediæval friars who travelled to the court of the Khan of the Mongols use the same name; thus William of Ruysbrock

calls it the Etilia. Marco Polo calls it the Herdil, which is a corruption of the same word. This is the form we meet with in the pages of the Venetian traveller, Jehosaphat Barbaro, who wrote in the fifteenth century. He calls the Volga Erdil.

Turning elsewhere, we find that the Kazan Tartars still call the river Idel. The Chuvashes and Bashkirs call it Adal or Asli Adal, i. e., great river; and the Kalmucks call it Ischil or Ischilgol. The Cheremisses call it the Jul, while the Mordvins, as I have already said, still know it by the name it was known by to Ptolemy, namely, the Rau.

We thus see that the name Volga is an unknown appellation of the great eastern river to the Greeks and the Byzantines, to the Arabs, and to the dwellers on its banks. Whence then came the name? From the Russians. The Russian Slaves so call the river, and they have apparently so called it since the days of their earliest chronicler, Nestor, who wrote at the beginning of the twelfth century.

Richard Chancellor, in the middle of the sixteenth century, thus speaks of it: "The country of Moscovie hath also very many and great rivers in it, and is marish ground in many places, and, as for the rivers, the greatest and most famous amongst all the rest is that which the Russes, in their own tongue, call Volga, but others know it by the name of Rha." ("Hakluyt Voyages," i, 247-8.)

From the Russians the name has passed into the pages of western writers. Several etymologies have been suggested for the name, none of which are accepted as satisfactory by Muller, "Ugrische Volkstamm," i, 105. Although the Arabs do not speak of a river Volga, they do speak of the town Bolgher and the country Bulgaria. It has, therefore, been suggested (see Muller, op. cit., 106) that the river took its name from the town or its inhabitants. The river of Bulghar, or of the Bulgarians, is very like in form to the river of the Khazars, the river of the Russians, the sea of the Khazars, the sea of the Chwalisses, which are well-known synonyms for the Volga and the Caspian, and in this etymology of the name of the Volga I am disposed to concur.

But this does not conclude our difficulty. It only removes it a little further away. What is the etymology of Bulgarian? Schafarik thus gives the various forms of the name: Bulgari, Bulgaris, Bulgarkh, Burgari, Burgian, Borgian, Burgan, Borgan, Borgal, Borgar, Burugundi, Wurugundi, Wurgari, Vulgari, Vulgaris, Bl'garin, and Bl'gare. Among these forms, that of Bulgari or Bulgares is by far the most frequent and probably the correct one. Schafarik goes on to say that it may be compared with those of other Finnic Uralian (I prefer to say Hunnic) tribes also ending

in gari, gori, guri, and giri, as Ungari, Hungari, Ungri, Ogori, Sabirugori, Ounguri, Hunoguri, Uturguri, Kutriguri or Kotraguri, Saraguri, etc. Detaching this common particle gori or gari, we have as the specific root of Bulgari the root Bul. That this is the root of the name is rendered almost certain when we remember that another set of names for the Bulgarians is Bulari, Byleri, Bileri, Biliri. An often quoted instance of the use of one of these latter is that of the Franciscan traveller, Du Plano Carpino, when he says: "The Mordvins and Bileres, who are the inhabitants of Great Bulgaria." The town of Biliarsk probably takes its name from them.

It is probable that several of the Hunnic names of tribes are derived from the names of chieftains, the Kotraguri from Kotrag, Uturguri from Uturg, etc. Now, it is curious that in a passage from the Arabic author, Cazvini, quoted at length below, it is said that the Bulgarians derive their name from a Mohamedan saint named Bela, by whose assistance they defeated the Khazars. Bela is a name well known among the Magyars, the dominant race of the old Hungarians, which was, as we shall try to show in the next paper, not distantly related to the Bulgarians. If this etymology be admissible, then Bulgarians mean subjects of Bela, as Nogais means subjects of Nogai, and the example is only one more instance of a law of nomenclature which is very consistent in the desert.

There are two Bulgarias, Great Bulgaria on the Volga, and Bulgaria south of the Danube. Great Bulgaria, on the Volga, is a well-known name in mediæval geography. The author, translated by Ouseley as Ibn Haukal, says, "the river Itil traverses the country of the Russians, then that of the Bulgarians, then that of the Burtasses, and falls at length into the sea of the Khazars." Ibn Fozlan also says, "the Itil comes from Russia and Bulgaria, and flows towards Khasaria." Nestor, the prime chronicler of Russia, says, " From Russia you can go by the Volga to the kingdoms of the Bolgari and Chwalises." Snorro, the Norse chronicler, also names this district Bulgaria. The Minrite traveller Carpino says, "this country of Kumania has immediately north of it, after Russia, the Mordvins and Bileres, that is Great Bulgaria." William of Ruysbroch, who traversed the Nogay steppes in 1253, says the Etilia comes from Great Bulgaria, which is in the North. Those of Pascatir (i. e.,

Bashkirland) have Great Bulgaria immediately on their west.

Great Bulgaria was, in fact, the large province governed from the city of Bolghar, not far from Kazan, and including the Khanate of Kazan, and a large stretch of country to the north.

It is very clear that the Great Bulgaria of earlier times was much further to the south than the later Great Bulgaria.