402 
NEW MODE OF TEACHING INFANTS TO READ. 
“ What I specifically claim as my iaven- 
tion or discovery, is the principle of applying 
the rising and falling of the tide, and other 
water, to the propelling machinery.” 
A patent was granted on the 23rd of De- 
cember, 1829, to Henry M. Webster, for a 
“ tide power,” in which it is said that “ the 
object which the subscriber proposes to effect 
is to bring into value and use the rise and fail 
of the tide on the seaboard, and particularly 
in the principal cities of the Union, to be em- 
ployed in manufacturing and other purposes.” 
The two plans, it will be seen, are identical ; 
in the first patent it is proposed to use “ ves- 
sels or floats of great weight and buoyancy,” 
” a condemned or other hulk of a ship of re- 
quired size,” being mentioned as suitable for 
the purpose.* 
LITERAL SPELLING. 
Sir,— It is an old maxim, to begin when you 
can with the egg ; and in this age of many 
beneficial and some Utopian reformations, 
I am of opinion it would be beneficial to re- 
form the mode by which our infants are first 
taught to read, and that would be effected by 
the abolition of absurd literal spelling. The 
words of our Language are made up of the 
sou7ids of its syllables, and 7iot of the soimds 
of its letters; and if so, why are the sounds 
of those letters taught 1 Several attempts have 
been made by Berthaud, Mr. Williams, and 
Anti-spelling, to accommodate the sounds of 
the letters to their sounds in words; but I 
would r'#l'orm it altogether, and abolish them. 
This may be thought too sweeping a measure, 
but if your readers will take the trouble of 
examining, they will find that literal spelling 
is altogether time lost and worse. Let them 
try the word leg — l,e,g. What are these 
sounds, leg or elegy? 
This foolish system is not followed in teach- 
ing music or French. A French master teaches 
his pupils the sounds of the French let- 
ters separately, as aw, bay, say, &cc. ; but he 
does not go on with this system, and say, 
“Now, my pupil, vay~o-oo-ace — tJoo (vous) : 
tay-o-oo-tay—too (tout).” It is too absurd 
and round about. He says at once, ” Look 
at that vous, it is voo ; at that tout, it is too ; 
don’t forget, they are voo and too in sound, 
and vous and tout in sight ;” and he remem- 
bers accordingly. 
There is a strong and prominent feature in 
most ( perhaps all) languages, and that is, the 
abundance of short vowels ; they suit the ear- 
ly state of speech, whether in infants, as ha, 
ma, pa, mam, pap, dad — or in low-cultivated 
nation, as the Eskimaux, in Ikmal-lik, Tus~ \ 
sarkit, Tennharpin, &c. These short sounds | 
far outnumber all the other vowel sounds put 
together ; and if all others were expunged 
from our tongue, they would still form a lan- 
guage capable of conveying an extensive range 
of ideas. 1 would only have to do with si//- | 
tables, as distinct sounds, at first. A child can j 
tell this : — ” is and, and why not this, and 1 
this is g, and why not this, jee 1 this z, why ! 
not this, zed V’ Let any one dissect an Eng- j 
lish word as it is now first taught, and divide 
it into the simple sounds of which it is com- I 
posed, and he will immediately find out that a j 
child ( poor thing) is instructed first to utter I 
a number of simple sounds, and then expect- 
ed to combine them into a compound sound, 
of which they do not form the elements or 
component parts. The child is first taught 
that this letter a sounds like hay ; but pei haps 
the first syllable which it sees the letter in {ab) j 
falsifies its previous instructions, for the letter 
a does not sound like /uiy, but somewhat like 
hah — and if it meet with the letter in the word 
all, it sounds neither like hay nor hah, but 
like haw. 
I think the most judicious beginning would 
1 e to teach these first short vowel sounds un- 
mixed. I intended publishing a first book on 
this plan, and had two sheets of it printed, 
but as 1 may not do so, T beg room for these 
remarks in your very useful work, and shall 
be glad of any comments upon them. My 
lessons are all of the following kind, reserving 
other vowel sounds for a higher grade or 
second book : — 
ab, ad, ak, al, pa, ra, sa, ta, dad, dan, fan. 
ed, ef, ek, en, beg, bed, bet, peg, pen, jet. 
ib, id, ik, in. it, ix, fit, pil, din, nit. 
ob, od, of, on, op, ox, bob, rob, pon, top. 
ub, uf, us, ut, urn, up, nup, rub, sud, sun. 
on it, an ox, it is, if it is, is it up, or at it. 
in a cap, it is a bat, mix it up, dad or mam, 
run not in mud, pin her cap on, Tom cut his pen. 
It cannot fit him, it is a bad job, it is as big as an ox. 
It is a bad peg lor his job, but Bob can lop it a bit for him. 
Put it in ajar, ora cup, in his gig, but let him not sit on it. 
Her bonnet is formal, but it is velvet. 
Benjamin cannot get it into his cabinet, &c. 
* The application of the tides as a motive 
power was suggested and discussed in the Me- 
chanics* Magazine, vol. xvi. pp. 3:5 and43o, and 
vol. xix. p, 167. The first mode proposed by 
our then correspondent differed altogether 
from either of these which have been patented 
in America. Dr. Gregory, too, in his “ Ma- 
thematics for Practical Men,” mentions that 
tidal power has been applied to pulling out 
old piles from rivers.— Ed- M. M. 
