ng in Mont St. Michel," had to be left out, for
there was no trace of them in St. Michael's Mount. But the monks who lived
in them were retained, and to give a little more life, the wild beasts
were added. Even the expression of _antistes_ instead of _episcopus_
occurs in the original, where we read, "Haec loci facies erat ante sancti
Michaelis apparitionem hoc anno factam religiosissimo Autberto
Abrincatensi episcopo, admonentis se velle ut sibi in ejus montis vertice
ecclesia sub ipsius patrocinio erigeretur. Haerenti ANTISTITI tertio idem
intimatum," etc.

Thus vanishes the testimony of William of Worcester, so often quoted by
Cornish antiquarians, as to the dense forest by which St. Michael's Mount
in Cornwall was once surrounded, and all the evidence that remains to
substantiate the former presence of trees on and around the Cornish Mount
is reduced to the name "the Hoar rock in the wood," given by William, and
the Cornish names of _Cara clowse in Cowse_ or _Cara Cowz in Clowze_,
given by Carew. How much or how little dependence can be placed on old
Cornish names of places and their supposed meaning has been shown before
in the case of Marazion. Carew certainly did not understand Cornish, nor
did the people with whom he had intercourse; and there is no doubt that he
wrote down the Cornish names as best he could, and without any attempt at
deciphering their meaning. He was told that "Cara clowse in Cowse" meant
the "Hoar rock in the Wood," and he had no reason to doubt it. Even a very
small knowledge of Cornish would have enabled Carew or anybody else at his
time to find out that _cowz_ might be meant for the Cornish word for wood,
and that _careg_ was rock. _Clowse_ too might easily be taken in the sense
of gray, as gray in Cornish was _glos_. Then why should we hesitate to
accept _Cara clowse in cowse_ as the ancient Cornish name of the Mount,
and why object to Mr. Pengelly's argument that it must have been given at
a time when the Mount was surrounded by a very dense forest, and that _a
fortiori_ at that distant period Cornish must have been the spoken
language of Cornwall?

The first objection is that the old word for "wood" in Cornish was _cuit_
with a final _t_, and that the change of a final _t_ into _z_ is a
phonetic corruption which takes place only in the later stage of the
Cornish language. The ancient Cornish _cuit_, "wood," occurs in Welsh as
_coed_, in Armorican as _koat_ and _koad_, and is supposed to