'Bohemians' as they are
called by the French, testifies to a similar error, to the fact that at
their first apparition in Western Europe they were supposed by the
common people in France to be the expelled Hussites of Bohemia.
Where words have not embodied an error, it will yet sometimes happen
that the sound or spelling will _to us_ suggest one. Against such in
these studies it will be well to be on our guard. Thus many of us have
been tempted to put 'domus' and 'dominus' into a connexion which really
does not exist. There has been a stage in most boys' geographical
knowledge, when they have taken for granted that 'Jutland' was so
called, not because it was the land of the Jutes, but on account of its
_jutting_ out into the sea in so remarkable a manner. At a much later
period of their education, 'Aborigines,' being the proper name of an
Italian tribe, might very easily lead astray. [Footnote: See Pauly,
_Encyclop._ s. v. Latium.] Who is there that has not mentally put the
Gulf of Lyons in some connexion with the city of the same name? We may
be surprised that the Gulf should have drawn its title from a city so
remote and so far inland, but we accept the fact notwithstanding: the
river Rhone, flowing by the one, and disemboguing in the other, seems
to offer to us a certain link of connexion. There is indeed no true
connexion at all between the two. In old texts this Gulf is generally
called _Sinus Gallicus_; in the fourteenth century a few writers began
to call it _Sinus Leonis_, the Gulf of the Lion, possibly from the
fierceness of its winds and waves, but at any rate by a name having
nothing to do with Lyons on the Rhone.
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