40 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



which serve to recall the contents of a vohmie. These tables are so 

 arranged as to show the numerical value of the influences that affect a 

 battle or a campaign, and, in connection with the scales and other appa- 

 ratus, enable the umpire to make the representation of warfare as perfect 

 as possible. Most of the methods that have been found so convenient in 

 this exercise are equally applicable to any other art. 



I think that some of the cartographic methods can be applied with 

 great advantage to the study of languages, especially for a scientific man, 

 who is obliged to read foreign languages from time to time without keeping 

 in constant practice. A method that has been employed in i-eading 

 French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, German, and Russian is as fol- 

 lows. One chart shows all the prefixes, affixes, etc. Another shows one 

 thousand or more of the most common roots, arranged alphabetically. 

 Ninety-nine words out of a hundred, more or less, can be found with these 

 charts, and the labor of consulting the lexicon reduced in proportion. 

 But that is not all. After you have used the chart a while, you recall 

 what you are looking for as soon as you turn your head toward the 

 chart, and often do not really look at it. Finally, it becomes photo- 

 graphed in your mind. After several years, if you take up the chart 

 again, the associated impressions will come back to you. Special charts 

 are made for special subjects, to be used in connection with the general 

 chart. 



In tabulating a language to speak it, a different method is employed. 

 The chart of inflections is the same, but the words are arranged, not al- 

 phabetically, but according to meaning. When the object of language is 

 merely to make your thoughts understood in a general way, without ref- 

 erence to elegance of expression, only a small vocabulary is required. If 

 the words are arranged in the charts according to their meaning, the for- 

 eign words become associated in the mind with the ideas they express, 

 and it is not necessary to think first in your native language and then 

 translate alphabetically. 



After applying these principles to one language of the Aryan family, 

 it is very easy to apply it to another, and it is about as easy to learn to 

 read ten languages by this method as one by the ordinary one. 



For the commercial traveller this method may not be as expeditious 

 as the more natural one, to accompany the word with the action, 

 the action with the word, if the object be only to go to the door, turn 

 the knob, look out of the window, etc. ; but the scientific man has other 

 needs. 



The Fine Arts are more or less dependent for their production 



