Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/86

 Ixxviii PREFACE. that the name of Scotland was applied to any pai*t of the subsequent kingdom of that name, and in the beginning of the eleventh century that the name of Scotia was so used. It is equally clear that, when first applied to any part of North Britain, its use was restricted to a district, bounded on the south by the Firth of Forth, on the west by the mountain- range which separated Perthshire from Argyleshire, and on the north by the river Spey,^ and that it sub- sequently spread over the whole of the territory which formed the later kingdom of Scotland, as the diflerent provinces lying beyond these limits were fully incorporated into the kingdom. Firths of Foitii The great natiu-al features of the Firths of Forth and Clyde a great natural and Clyde, approacHug, as they do, within no gxeat distance of each other, and leaving an isthmus of little more than between thirty and forty miles in breadth, could not fail to exercise a powerful influ- ence in fixing the limits of the difi'erent races occupy- ing the country ; and even as early as the expedition of Agricola, his historian Tacitus notices that the tides of the opposite seas, flowing very far up the estuaries of Clota and Bodotria, almost intersect the country', leaving only a narrow neck of land, and throwing the territory beyond it as it were into another island. The Celtic term of A Iha or A Ihan seems to have been confined to the country north > Scotia is repeatedly distin- guished from Arregaithel on the west, Moravia on the north, and Laodouia on the south, which im- plies that it was confined to a dis- trict within these limits.