1887. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 41 
dren of an earlier period. The round game of Scandal, which 
is said to have furnished amusement to English literary celebri- 
ties, illustrates the way in which oral communications are dis- 
torted. Since counting-out is the main object in view, the 
puerile mind is probably satisfied with retaining the rhythm, the 
rhyme, the number of words, and the general construction, any 
or all of these features. So far as counting-out is concerned in 
the simple rhyme : 
‘* One, two, three, four, 
Mary at the cottage door, 
Five, six, seven, eight, 
Eating cherries off a plate ;” 
it makes no difference whether we say Jennie for Mary, kitchen 
for cottage, apples for cherries, and picking for eating; the 
general effect is the same. 
A very natural corruption is that of : ‘‘ One is all, two is all, 
six is all, seven ” into ‘‘One-erzoll, two-erzoll, zickerzoll, zan ” 
but the conversion of ‘‘ bobtail vinegar” (with which the second 
line begins) into ‘‘ Baptist minister,” is a surprise. Yet the 
history of the English language affords continually examples 
equally eccentric; the names of old taverns in England have 
undergone curious transformation at the hands, or strictly at the 
mouths, of the common people. The British tar who finds his 
sea-home christened ‘‘ Bellerophon,” is not long in transmuting 
it into Billy Ruffian, a much more comprehensible and satisfac- 
tory name to him. ‘‘ L’Hirondelle,” became in like manner 
Lron Devil. 
The school-boy looks upon these rhymes as merely queer 
sounds and has ‘‘no compunction in making them queerer ; 
and his genius leads him to tack on other nonsense provided it 
rhymes.” (Hllis.) 
The number of these doggerels in use among children is far 
greater than commonly supposed. ‘he speaker has collected 
no less than 450 current in England and America ; of these he 
gave about twenty examples. 
He has also succeeded in demonstrating that the custom of 
counting-out obtains around the world ameng civilized and 
semi-civilized races, and by correspondence and personal in- 
quiry he has collected examples in the following languages : 
Penobscot, Japanese, Hawaii, Marathi, Romany, Arabic, Turk- 
ish, Armenian, Bulgarian, Modern Greek, Swedish, Portuguese, 
Spanish, Basque, Italian, French, Dutch, Platt-deutsch, German; 
and with the English above-named they number over 870. 
Having established the wide distribution of the custom of 
counting-out, the speaker discussed the antiquity and origin 
