comparative degrees of greatness, smallness, hardness, rapidity, and strength, &c., may be conveyed with more accuracy and precision than could readily be conceived.' In Madagascar ratchi means 'bad,' but râtchi is 'very bad.' The natives of Australia, according to Oldfield, show the use of this process in combination with that of symbolic reduplication: among the Watchandie tribe jir-rie signifies 'already or past,' jir-rie jir-rie indicates 'a long time ago,' while jie-r-rie jirrie (the first syllable being dwelt on for some time) signifies 'an immense time ago.' Again, boo-rie is 'small,' boo-rie-boo-rie 'very small,' and b-o-rie boorie 'exceedingly small.' Wilhelm von Humboldt notices the habit of the southern Guarani dialect of South America of dwelling more or less time on the suffix of the perfect tense, yma, y—ma, to indicate the length or shortness of the distance of time at which the action took place; and it is curious to observe that a similar contrivance is made use of among the aboriginal tribes of India, where the Ho language forms a future tense by adding á to the root, and prolonging its sound, kajee 'to speak,' Amg kajēēá 'I will speak.' As might be expected, the languages of very rude tribes show extremely well how the results of such primitive processes pass into the recognized stock of language. Nothing could be better for this than the words by which one of the rudest of living races, the Botocudos of Brazil, express the sea. They have a word for a stream, ouatou, and an adjective which means great, ijipakijiou; thence the two words 'stream-great,' a little strengthened in the vowels, will give the term for a river, ouatou-ijiipakiiijou, as it were, 'stream-grea-at,' and this, to express the immensity of the ocean, is amplified into ouatou-iijipakiijou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou. Another tribe of the same family works out the same result more simply; the word ouatou, 'stream/ becomes ouatou-ou-ou-ou, 'the sea.' The Chavantes very naturally stretch the expression rom-o-wodi, 'I go a long way,' into rom-o-o-o-o-wodi, ' I go a very long way indeed,' and when they are called upon to count
