49 



perceivable as illustrative examples are not given, an omission justly 

 reprehensible in a treatise of this nature. 



In Table No. 1. with respect to gender and inflection I find 

 tveenty-three errors in the modes of declining the noun and article ; 

 and in Table No. 2. half that number. These are so evident to 

 the Irish scholar who has " the least smattering of Grammar," that 

 I deem it unnecessary to waste more words on them here. Treat- 

 ing of the formation of the cases of regular nouns, it is, stated, 

 that " Nouns having ^<x or e-u in the nominative singular make e-O) 

 in the genitive as ttie-<t|t, a finger, f 5^ut, a story, become upon va- 

 riation ttieojft, 'f^e^Ojt." — In poetry these words with a few others 

 may take that form, but in prose and conversation they are written 

 and pronounced tn'f)^, f 5^)t. The student may ask what form do 

 1fe-ct|t, 5e<tti, fe<t|tc, "oe-xi^c, tn^wv, ^uv, fcf ut), with many more, take 

 in thd genitive singular. 



Regular Nouns with the Article. — In the first Declension, 0)5, 

 a virgin, should take an encrease in the genitive singular ; it should 

 be 6j5e instead of 6j5, as here given. The second Declension is cor- 

 rect ; but the third requires aspiration in the vocative case (which 

 case is omitted,) of mutable consonants, except {, when followed 

 by any other consonant except I, n or |i. The Declension and Gen- 

 der of col<tm I disapprove of, although I have seen it similarly 

 declined as a feminine noun in a manuscript treatise. Yet 

 it is masculine, for we never say, in the nominative singular with the 

 article prefixed, ttn 6ol<ttti, and even in the Dictionary following 

 this grammar it is so marked. It is observable that between the 

 rules and examples given in the latter for genders, and the genders 

 themselves, as marked in the former, there is considerable variance. 

 This is unpardonable, independently of its being attended by one 

 of the worst consequences, that of misleading the learner. In the 



VOL. XV. H 



