4 JANUARY 1930, Page 34

Professor Mawer, who with Professor Stenton founded the English Place-name

Society, and is editing its excellent volumes on the counties, has printed his recent King's College lectures on Problems of Place-name Study (Cambridge University Press, Os.). He shows here how this new, and fascinating science throws light on the racial settlements in early England and on the Anglo-Saxon language, and he also discusses the various lines of interpretation that may be followed when one is confronted by a place-name that may be personal or descriptive in its origin. It is noticeable that very many of the names cited by Professor Mawer as examples refer to woods, forest clearings and marshes—clear proof of the condition of England when the Angles and Saxons settled here.