but they provide for all the nouns and of every' possible kind ; for these, it must be noun-adjectives verbs in

remembered, can

all

be converted, under the plastic rules of

the language, into verbs.

With a formidable display of vocal terms and inflective forms, there is, therefore, a very simple principle to unravel the lexico graphy, namely, fidelity to the meaning of primary and vowelic If we compare this principle to a thread, parts of sounds.

which are white, black, green, blue and yellow, the white may stand as the symbol of five vowelic classes of words in a, the

HUDSON RIPER INDIANS.

black in b; the green in c; the blue in d; and the yellow It creates no confusion to the eye to add, that there is

in e.

a filament of red running through the whole series of colored strands, whereby five additional distinctions are made, making

ten in all. These represent the two great classes of sounds of the Algonquin grammar, denoting what has been called the epicene. and anti-epicene scheme. If we would know to what class of conjugations a word It will be belongs, we must inquire how the plural is made.

borne in mind that all verbs, like all substantives, either termi nate in a vowel sound, or, where they do not, that a vowel sound must be added in making the plural, in order that it may serve as a coalescent for the epicene g or the anti-epicene

.

Thus man, inine^ is rendered men, ininewug, not by adding the