Consonants are, therefore, the breaks or _limitations_ upon the otherwise unbroken and continuous vocality, voice, or vocalized breath. In other words, as already said, _Vowel_-Sound is the Elemental _Substance_, and _Consonant_-Sound the Elemental _Form_ of Language, or Speech. (By Vowels and Consonants are here meant, the Reader should closely observe, Vowel-_Sounds_ and Consonant-_Sounds_, as produced by the _Organs_ of _Speech_, and as they address themselves to the _Ear_, distinguished and wholly apart from the _letters_ or combinations of letters by which they are diversely represented to the _Eye_ in different languages.) By a valid but somewhat remote analogy, the _Vowel_-Sounds of Language may be regarded collectively as the _Flesh_, and the _Consonant_-Sounds as the _Bone_ or _Skeleton_ of the Lingual Structure. Flesh is an _Analogue_ or Correspondential Equivalent of Substance. Bone or Skeleton, which gives _outline_ or _shape_ to the otherwise soft, collapsing, and lumpy flesh-mass of the Human or Animal Body, is an _Analogue_ of Correspondential Equivalent of Limitation or Form; as the framework of a house is the shaping or form-giving factor or agent of the entire structure. _Vowel_-Sounds are soft, fluent, changeful, and evanescent. One passes easily into another by slight deviations of pronunciation, resulting from trivial differences in National and Individual condition and culture; like the Flesh of the animal, which readily decays from the Bony Skeleton, while the last remains preserved for ages as a fossil. The Vowel-Sounds so readily lose their identity, that they are of slight importance to the Etymologist or Comparative Philologist, who is, in fact, dealing in the _Paleontology_ of Language. The _Consonants_ are, on the contrary, the _Fossils_ of Speech; bony and permanent representatives of Framework, of _Limitation_, of Form. Consonant-Sounds are also sometimes denominated _Articulations_. This word means _joinings_ or _jointings_. It is from the Latin _articulus_, a JOINT, and is instinctually applied to the Consonant-Sounds in accordance with their analogy with the _Skeleton_ of the Human or Animal System. By an easy and habitual slide in the meaning of Words, a term like _Joint_ is sometimes used to denote the _break_ or _opening_ between parts, and sometimes to denote one of the parts intervening between such breaks; as when we speak of a _joint_ of meat, meaning thereby what a Botanist would signify by the term _Internode_, the stretch or reach or shaft of bone extending from one joint (break) to another, with the meat attached to it.