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This thesis aims to investigate a sample of the place-names of medieval Cornwall within their landscape contexts, and thereby gain a better understanding of the relationship of the Cornish landscape to how its places were designated during the medieval period. To explore this issue, I have identified six research questions which relate to aspects of the landscape and selected seventeen Cornish place-name elements to analyse in depth. These include eleven lower and higher status commonly used habitative elements, as well as six widespread topographical elements denoting high points, waterways and woodland features throughout Cornwall. Selection criteria brought together categories used in time-depth landscape classification of landscape with types of place-name element considered important by scholars. A case study for each element has been developed to give further detail of typical landscape contexts. The analysis of place-name elements has looked at their respective landscape positions, relative elevation, proximity to watercourses, distribution and intensity, Historic Landscape Characterisation types, dates of first recording, and usual combinations with other types of place-name elements. These aspects of landscape have been drawn together through the medium of layers of a Geographic Information System (GIS) reflecting the interdisciplinary research of landscape archaeologists, place-name experts, historians, geographers, and local studies experts. The GIS is based on an extract from the Cornwall Historic Environment Record dataset covering early medieval and medieval settlements, enhanced with additional fields covering details of placenames, and has been used as an illustrative tool for the analysis. This study demonstrates how place-names reflected the medieval landscape in Cornwall and its dynamic settlement patterns. The distribution of Cornish placenames gives insights into the naming practices used during the medieval period in Brittonic-speaking regions in relation to their landscape contexts.

The effects of locally applied high and low temperatures on the melanophores of Phoxinus phoxinus (L) are investigated. The results of v. Frisch (1911) on Phoxinus and of Smith (1928) on Fundulus are in general confirmed and several new features of the responses are described. The effects are found to occur in several species of teleost fishes but are absent in others of the 31 species which are newly investigated. Reflex mediation of the responses from sensory endings in the skin is rejected and a new theory is put forward to account for the phenomena observed. This requires no novel anatomical elements but demands double reciprocal nervous control of melanophore action. The question of double innervation is reinvestigated by means of selective electrical accommodation in a nerve-melanophore preparation. The experiments of v. Gelei (1942) involving the use of ergotamine as a selective blocking agent are confirmed but the arguments put forward by that author for the pathways of melanophore dispersing fibres are shown to be false. An alternative theory, consistent with the results of other authors, is proposed to explain these results. The possibility that ergotamine reverses the responses of melanophores to sympathomimetic agents is examined. The effects of certain other selective blocking and stimulating drugs on the responses of melanophores to background colour, extreme temperatures and electricalstimulation are examined. No conclusive solutions to the initial problems are reached but several new questions are raised and suggestions for further experimental work are put forward.