THE STATE GEOLOGIST. 45 



excellent examples of the working of the same governing force. 

 Some of these are sufficiently significant as to be worth noting. 



As has been aptly remarked by Professor Lounsbury, 1 the 

 survival of ancient usage explains the existence among the unedu- 

 cated of many pronunciations which, at a former period, were 

 regularly employed by the educated. "The language of the illit- 

 erate is," this author observes, "to> a great extent, archaic. It 

 retains words and meanings and grammatical constructions which 

 were once in the best of use, but have ceased to be used by the 

 best. This is as true of pronunciation as it is of vocabulary and 

 grammar. In this respect the archaic nature of the speech of the 

 uneducated manifests itself in practices which would be little ex- 

 pected to exist. It sometimes affects the place of the accent. In 

 our tongue it is generally popular usage which is disposed to i lay 

 the stress upon a syllable far from the end of the word. * * * 

 Yet, curiously enough, this practice, based upon classical author- 

 ity, lingers sometimes in the mouths of the uncultivated long after 

 it has been abandoned by the cultivated. Readers of Milton are 

 well aware that with him blasphemous is invariably pronounced 

 blasphe' -mous . It was probably the general usage of the educated 

 men of his time. Now no one pronounces it so 1 save the unlet- 

 tered. They remain faithful to the classical quantity, and are 

 treated with contumely for it by such as deem it both their right 

 and duty to be horrified by hearing illustrate pronounced 

 illustrate. Similar observations may be made of contrary and 

 mischievous." 



It is apt to provoke a smile on hearing familiar words pro- 

 nounced as if spelled critter, nater, picter, etc., instead of sounding 

 the final ture, yet these are instances of inherited usage which 

 two or three centuries ago was common in good society. A Lon- 

 doner's pronunciation of the word clerk is another interesting 

 survival, as is also the custom of replacing the sound of e by a 

 in words like certain (vulgarly sartin), service, servant, sermon 

 and serpent. Even Jersey was once pronounced Jarsey, as clergy 

 was pronounced clargy. The reader will not fail to notice the 

 close parallel existing between these cases of survival of ancient 



^he Standard of Pronounciation in English (New York and London, 1904). 



