the common name of forests among the Celts, from the widely extensive one which ranged for 500 miles across the country of Gaul, or that which covered more than half the county of Warwick in Britain, and the sites of which still retain the appellation of Arden, to the much smaller one of the ancient Manconien, that covered and surrounded the site of the present Manchester. It is written Ardven by Caesar and Tacitus in speaking of the forest in Gaul, and Ardven by Ollian in mentioning the woods of Caledonia. It cannot (says Mr Whitaker) be compounded of the prepositional article in Celtic, and the substantive den, as Baxter and Camden assert it to be; but is formed of ard an adjective, and ven the same as den. The meaning of the name therefore is not, as Mr Baxter renders it, simply the hills, or even, as the ingenious translator of Ossian interprets it, the high hill. Ard signifies either high or great, and ven or den either a hill or wood. Arduen, Arduen, or Arden, then, means a considerable wood. Hence, only, the name became applicable to such very different sites, as the plains of Warwickshire and the hills of Scotland: and it was given, not only to the most extensive forests, to that which was the greatest in Gaul, or so considerable in Britain; but to many that were important only within their own contracted districts, as the wood of Manconien above mentioned, and others.