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—;NOTES. 42.>ers. The man who sacrifices his judgmnr.t at the shrine of afavourite hypothesis, may, with a little ingenuity, do wonder^,Strabo makes the Caspian Sea a gulf of the northern ocean. Inorder to establish this point, it is only necessary to suppose,that that part which is now terrafirma^ has been filled up sinceStrabo's time by the action and re-action of the tide. Man_r'similar instances of repletion might be adduced. Propertiescalls the Getaj (a nation of Thrace) llihcrni Getcc^ which may hatrendered (according to the modern Monkish acceptation) theIrish Getce. Gildas, speaking of the Scots and Picts, says—Romnnis ad suos remeantibus emergunt certatim de curucis, qui^hus sunt trans Scythicam Vallem evecti—i. e. '' The Romanshaving left Britain, they (the Scots and Picts) eagerly land frorntheir curroughs (skin boats), ia which they passed over the Scythianvalley." This Scythica (Scotlca) vallis was the Frith ofForth; but were we to take the natural import of the words,they might be rendered a. valley of ancient Scythia. Tbe Caledoniansincluded all the inhabitants of the north of Scotlandand Tacitus mentions their red hair as a peculiar characteristic.Gildas, on the contrary, calls them ieiri Scoiorinn FictorumqueGreges^'i. e. *' The black herds of Scots and Picts. Here wehave a red and a black theory ; and every one may adopt theone or the other, as best suits his purpose. Ten thousand instancesof the same kind might be adduced.The passages on which Pinkarton founds his theory that Sectlandwas Ireland, are exactly of the same description; and Ishall notice a few of them. Bede, speaking of Ireland, saysIJcec Scotoium pairta est—'i, e. "This is the native country ofthe Scots. That the Dalriadic colony migrated from Ireland toArgyleshire, is not dippufed; and that the name Scot originatedwith this colony, is equally allowed; but it is this very circumstancewhich has obscured the point in question. There is noimpropriety in calling Irelar.d the native country cf this colony,any more than in railing Britain the native country of the colonysettled at Botany Bay ; but certainly no one vvould thence inferthat Britain and New Holland are one and the same identical