and breeding of superior dairy cattle, and in properly and adequately feeding them, so as to lessen the cost of production and greatly increase their profits.

This cream-gathering system would secure a uniform marketable quality, economy of labour, and could offer supplies, either in large bulk or in smaller quantities. It would provide an organized collection of produce, and could deal on more favourable terms with Railway Companies, and, by a more direct supply to the public, do away with the profits of the middlemen and commission agents. The method also could be introduced gradually into different localities, thereby giving time to establish the brand, and to avoid mistakes which might be ruinous.

It will be seen that this method differs essentially from the old blending system of the Continent, where different makes of butter are classified, mixed together, and coloured uniformly, and then re-worked, with a serious deterioration of quality in consequence.

Farmers also, in time, could be educated to regulate the supply, so as not to flood the market in the summer when the price is low, but having a part produced in winter when prices are higher than in summer. Unfair and excessive railway charges could be opposed, and combatted, and preferential rates for foreign goods should not be allowed. The distribution and sale of dairy produce is more of a commercial question than an agricultural one, and requires the greatest tact and knowledge of markets and carriage rates and freights.

Lord Vernon, the founder and chief proprietor of the co-operative dairy factory at Sudbury, in Derbyshire, established about ten or twelve years ago, recently advocated the appointment of experts in dairying for England, similar to those in Denmark and other European countries, to teach the English people how to make and how to

organize the sale of the butter. The farmers would be willing to take the advice of men in whose sincerity of purpose they had absolute confidence, and who had no personal interests to serve. The services of similar Government experts are urgently needed to guide the practice of Welsh farmers, who as a class labour under exceptional difficulties as regards transport facilities and suitable markets for their produce. If Parliament only followed the example set by our Colonial and Foreign competitors by the appointment of Consulting Experts, who would be independent of all interested parties, I believe that their work would be immediately successful, and would greatly benefit the country generally.

FIELD TRIALS-FORMATION AND MANAGEMENT OF PERMANENT PASTURES.

EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN GAEL AND

BRYTHON.1

BY PROFESSOR KUNO MEYER, M.A., PH.D.

WHEN I was asked to read a paper before this Society, I happened to be engaged in working at the edition of an old-Irish saga, which, among other things, tells of the wanderings of an Irish tribe and its final settlement, in the third century of our era, in South Wales. As those who supply the small demand for Celtic books generally find it pretty hard to dispose of their wares, which are a drug in the market-for, with the honourable exception of one or two continental firms and the philo-Celtic house of Messrs. D. Nutt, what publisher would care to risk money on such unprofitable matter?-I accepted the invitation with all the greater pleasure, hoping that you would grant my edition a place in the Transactions of the Society.

I have the honour, then, to-night of laying before you a series of documents of a somewhat varied character, all of which, however, have this in common, that they bear more or less directly on the relations in the early centuries of our era between Ireland and Great Britain, or between the Gael and Brython, and, to a less extent, also between the latter and the Saxon. Some of these documents are old Irish texts not hitherto edited; others consist mainly of corrections and emendations of Welsh

1 Read before the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion on the 28th of May, 1896, at 20, Hanover Square. Chairman, Mr. Alfred Nutt.

and Latin texts imperfectly edited; and lastly there are a number of philological speculations, more especially interpretations and etymologies of place-names.

It is, however, not my intention to-night to read these to you in extenso. They are all of them of too special a nature to engage the attention of a wider audience. I propose rather to give you an account of their chief contents only, and to point out their bearing on some questions which are at present much under discussion, more particularly on a question of racial and historical import, which has lately been brought forward again by Professor Rhys in his paper on the Twrch Trwyth, read before this Society, and in two further papers printed in the Archæologia Cambrensis. I refer to his theory that the Gael preceded the Brython in the occupation of Britain. This is, as you are doubtlessly aware, by no means a new hypothesis; indeed it will soon be 200 years since it was first published. But Professor Rhys has brought forward in its support several new arguments; such as the undoubted existence in Welsh of a fair number of loanwords from Irish Gaelic,' and the presence in those early Welsh tales known as the Mabinogion of legendary lore of unmistakably Irish origin.

I hope you will not be disappointed, if I decline to enter into all the aspects-racial, historical, linguistic and literary-raised by this hypothesis. I intend rather to place certain facts before you, which I think Professor Rhys cannot have fully considered, and which will be found in the main to make against his theory. I prefer to let these facts as far as possible speak for themselves. Indeed, at the present stage of Celtic research, it seems

1 With regard to the Welsh machdeyrn, Bret. machtiern, the Irish word from which it is borrowed is macthigern or mac-tigirn, not mactigerna.