Among uncivilized races, the many-syllabled terms used for not uncommon objects, as well as the descriptive character of proper names, show us that the words used for the less familiar things are formed by compounding the words used for the more familiar things. This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest integration. How small is the degree of this integration, however, when compared with that reached in well-developed languages is shown both by the great length of the compound words used for things and acts of constant occurrence, and by the separableness of their elements. Certain North-American tongues very well illustrate this. In a Ricaree vocabulary extending to fifty names of common objects, which in English are nearly all expressed by single syllables, there is not one monosyllabic word; and in the nearly-allied vocabulary of the Pawnees, the names for these same common objects are monosyllabic in but two instances. Things so familiar to these hunting tribes as _dog_ and _bow_, are, in the Pawnee language, _ashakish_ and _teeragish_; the _hand_ and the _eyes_ are respectively _iksheeree_ and _keereekoo_; for _day_ the term is _shakoorooeeshairet_, and for _devil_ it is _tsaheekshkakooraiwah_; while the numerals are composed of from two syllables up to five, and in Ricaree up to seven. That the great length of these familiar words implies a low degree of development, and that in the formation of higher languages out of lower there is a progressive integration, which reduces the polysyllables to dissyllables and monosyllables, is an inference fully confirmed by the history of our own language. Anglo-Saxon _steorra_ has been in course of time consolidated into English _star_, _mona_ into _moon_, and _nama_ into _name_. The transition through the intermediate semi-Saxon is clearly traceable. _Sunu_ became in semi-Saxon _sune_, and in English _son_: the final _e_ of _sune_ being an evanescent form of the original _u_. The change from the Anglo-Saxon plural, formed by the distinct syllable _as_, to our plural formed by the appended consonant _s_, shows us the same thing: _smithas_ in becoming _smiths_, and _endas_ in becoming _ends_, illustrate progressive coalescence. So too does the disappearance of the terminal _an_ in the infinitive mood of verbs; as shown in the transition from the Anglo-Saxon _cuman_ to the semi-Saxon _cumme_, and to the English _come_. Moreover the process has been slowly going on, even since what we distinguish as English was formed. In Elizabeth’s time, verbs were still very frequently pluralized by the