The view thus taken of nouns, leads, it seems, to important results, and, in particular, enables us to explain what Mr Kavanagh had been puzzling himself about for half his lifetime--the meaning of the expressions, "This is John's book," and "this is a book of John's." We had always thought that the first of these phrases was plain sailing, and that the second meant, "this a book of John's books--or, one of John's books," _ex libris Joannis_. But these simple suppositions cannot satisfy men of science, who require a discovery to explain what other men think they understand without one:-- "We can now account for what has hitherto puzzled all grammarians, namely, the double possessive. This book of John's means, this book of all John's; that is, this book forming a part of all John's, of all things belonging to John." "And how rich and full the meaning of this new possessive! What an image it brings before the mind, compared to the wretched meaning our ignorance of this noble science has hitherto taught us to allow it to have! This book is John's, means, we have been told, this book is John's book. How frivolous, how poor, compared to, 'this book is part of all things corporeal and ideal belonging to John.' How useless this repetition of the same word book! and how incorrect! since if John possessed only one book, and that we said, 'this book of John's is better than mine,' we were immediately stopt, as we cannot say, this book of John's book is better than mine. But now we know that this book of John's, &c., means, 'this book is a part of all John's,' &c." Our discoverer thereafter proceeds to analyse the personal terminations of verbs, of which he seems to give an elucidation highly satisfactory to himself, and which, we hope, will be equally so to his readers. It is obviously of oriental origin, being analogous to the astronomical theory of the elephant and tortoise, by which the Hindoos are said so clearly to account for the support of our terrestrial planet. "_Love_, _lovest_, _loveth_, or _loves_," &c., have been formed by combining the root with the inflections of the auxiliary verb, _to have_. He gives a very distinct table by which "We see that _love hast_ has been shortened to _lovest_; _love has_, to _loves_; _love hath_ to _loveth_; _love had_ to _loved_; and _love hadst_ to _lovedst_. The _ha_ has been omitted throughout, as, love [ha]st; love [ha]s; love [ha]th; love [ha]d; love [ha]dst."