12 
took Webster’s Dictionary (1852), which contains 1281 
pages of defined words— in all 92,488. He then examined 
the relative frequency of letters as initials, as words, and 
then found out the average number of words to a page. 
The next process was to go over the dictionary and to count 
all the words in the pages specially selected of which he had 
perfect knowledge, and which he would without hesitation 
employ. The result was that out of 4420 words he felt 
himself to have 1599 at full command. This proportion 
applied to the rest of the book would give Prof. Holden’s 
vocabulary as 83,456 words. 
Mr. Holden gives some other curious particulars. The 
Shakspere Concordance (in which verbs and nouns 
spelled alike are not discriminated) contains 24,000 
words. The Concordance to Milton’s Poems contains 17,377 
words. The Bible contains 7209 words, exclusive of 
proper names. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains about 
12,000 words. 
The results obtained by Prof. Holden seem to require 
verification by others before we can be sure that his is an 
average experience. 
A friend has kindly gone over the ground for me, with the 
following results 
A. 
pp. 
1—116 
Total. 
1199 
422 
L. 
pp 
. 666— 670 
Total. 
289 
157 
S. 
>5 
974_979 
455 
162 
G, 
492—493 
145 
70 
c. 
?5 
162—166 
300 
168 
N. 
1210—1211 
144 
50 
P. 
5> 
790—793 
300 
121 
H. 
5) 
550—554 
289 
165 
F. 
i) 
462—463 
144 
54 
W. 
5) 
1248—1249 
145 
42 
M. 
5) 
716—717 
145 
68 
K. 
J5 
638— 642 
289 
149 
J. 
?> 
590—591 
144 
47 
Y. 
?) 
1278 
59 
26 
E. 
380—384 
289 
169 
Z. 
}> 
1281 
84 
11 
4420 
1881 
My own counting reaches a somewhat higher figure than 
