"We trace the same radical in the Welsh more, the sea, and in the Latin mare, humor, humidus.[[27]]

"All these people cannot be supposed to have derived their sound from each other. It must have descended to them from some primitive source, common to all."

From the expression used by J. W. H., "the connexion of the Welsh dwr with the Greek ὕδωρ is remarkable," he appears not to have known that Vezron found so many resemblances in the Doric or Laconic dialect, and the Celtic, that he thereupon raised the theory that the Lacedæmonians and the Celts were of the same—the Titanic—stock.

T. J.

Footnote 27:[(return)]

He may have added the Armoric or Breton mor, mar; and the Irish muir, mara.

Early Culture of the Imagination (Vol. iii., p. 38.).—The germ of the thought alluded to by Mr. Gatty is as ancient as the time of Plato, and may be found in the Republic, book ii. c. 17. If this will aid Mr. Gatty in his research, it is gladly placed at his disposal by

Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie.

January 20. 1851.

Venville (Vol. iii., p. 38.).—R. E. G. inquires respecting the origin of this word, as applied to certain tenants round Dartmoor Forest. The name is peculiar to that district, and is applied chiefly to certain vills or villages (for the most part also parishes), and to certain tenements within them, which pay fines to the Lord of Lidford and Dartmoor, viz. the Prince of Wales, as Duke of Cornwall. The fines are supposed to be due in respect either of rights of common on the forest, or of trespasses committed by cattle on it; for the point is a vexata quæstio between the lord and tenants of Dartmoor and the tenants of the Venville lands, which lie along the boundaries of it.

In the accounts rendered to the lord of these fines, there was a distinct title, headed "Fines Villarum" when these accounts were in Latin; and I think it cannot be doubted that the lands and tenures under this title came to be currently called Finevill lands from this circumstance. Hence Fenvill, Fengfield, or Venvill; the last being now the usual spelling and pronunciation. R. E. G. may see a specimen of these accounts, and further observations on them, in Mr. Rowe's very instructive Perambulation of Dartmoor, published a year or two ago at Plymouth.