150 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [April 



have several tenses. The total number of them is twenty-nine 

 The verbs in Iroquois have twenty-one tenses, divided into three 

 moods, indicative, imperative, and subjunctive. 



" Nouns are scarcely less marvellous ; they are conjugated rather 

 than declined. It will be said in Iroquois : kasitake, at my feet ; sasi- 

 take, at thy feet ; rasitake, at his feet : and in Algonquin : nisit, my 

 foot ; kisit, thy foot ; osit, his foot : as it is said : ktahahtos, ni Sal, 

 I see ; satkahtos, kiSah, thou seest ; rathkatos, Sahi, he sees. The 

 prefixes of nouns are almost the same as those of the verbs. There 

 are in Iroquois, as well in the conjugation of nouns as in theconjuga- 

 tion of verbs, fifteen persons, of which four are in the sing, five in 

 the dual, five in the plural, and an indeterminate one. The Algon- 

 quins have only seven persons ; but their nouns possess, neverthe- 

 less, a prodigious number of inflexions on account of the accidents to 

 which they are liable, the list of which is : the diminutive, the 

 deteriorative, the ultra-deteriorative, the investigative, the dubita- 

 tive, the near preterite, the remote preterite, the locative, the obvia- 

 tive, the superobviative, the possessive, the sociative, and the 

 modificative." 



A multitude of questions and objections might be raised even 

 on the few points stated above. The following, for example, have 

 been suggested to us by an eminent hebraist : 



The first of tlie three words cited as examples of the He- 

 brew (sabaktani) is not Hebrew, but belongs to another, though 

 cognate language. In this first example, therefore, we think M. 

 Renan will be disposed to deny the analogy. The reviewer 

 through inadvertence has here given his opponent an advantage. 

 Then again without objecting that in the one language the ni is 

 prefixed, and in the other post-fixed, we must recollect that in He- 

 brew, ni, which is only the objective case of the pronoun when 

 immediately joined to a verb, is used but very seldom, especially 

 when compared with the fuller prevalence of the form i, and 

 that in verbs the n for the first person is never used in the past 

 tenses, and in the future tenses the n and the i are hoth omitted, 

 and the letter a, the other fragment of the absolute form of the 

 pronouns, is employed. It is only right to keep these points in 

 view, in establishing the analogy sought to be set up. In the 

 second example cited, ladeka (more properly yadecha), the a is 

 changed into i in the Iroquois, and the o of the third person is 

 not used in the verb, e. g., (p. 20,) niciSe, he kills. The reviewer 



