in the course of buying and selling. Thus final ng is here accounted for.

3. In Mongolian there is a recent tendency to introduce ng. Thus sonos-ho "to hear" is now heard songsaho. There is no such tendency at present to any new production of m.

4. The general conclusion to be drawn is that ng is a final of new growth, that it has made much less progress in Mongol than in Chinese, and that it has made its appearance chiefly since the separation of the vocabularies.

5. The roots were well developed and the words were representatives of well-defined ideas before the separation of the Chinese and Mongol languages from the common stock from which they both sprang.

6. The Japanese vocabulary has in it the same sort of evidence as the Mongol to the identity of roots when compared with the Chinese, and gives clear proof in the same way of the change from m to ng. I refer here to the indigenous part of the Japanese vocabulary, e.g. samashi "wake from sleep," Ch. sing; same "become cool," Ch. t'sing, leng. Examples are extremely numerous.

The only change of labials that now remains to be considered is that from m to n.

Tsam 813, and tsan 1028, both mean a Chinese hair-pin, one of those thick pins, seven inches long, which Chinese women put through their hair. Tsam and tsan both mean "to pierce," "to take with the hand," "to congregate." When the final letter changed to ng, a small portion of the words that lost m took n instead of ng.

The above is an instance of an old change from m to n. In the modern language m has universally become n over the whole area occupied by the Mandarin tongue.

7. CHANGES IN THE VOWELS.

The researches of Chinese scholars have shown, as exemplified in the Chapter on the History of the Sounds, that the rhymes of the Shi king may be divided into seventeen classes.

This division embraces both vowels and consonants. The old Vowels vowels are less capable of detection than the consonants. We readily slide. Minute changes in their character readily occur. can only hope therefore to arrive at conclusions of a general nature. The letter a in father belongs now to c'ha "tea," ta "great." In

the Odes it belonged to most of those characters which are at present pronounced with o, as p'o "break,” wo "I," to "many." With the testimony of Twan yü t'sai, who places such words in his XVIIth class, agrees the evidence of the Cochin Chinese, Japanese, and Corean transcriptions.

Some modern words in i, as yi "ought," ki "fowl," were nga, ka, Coch. Ch. ga "fowl."

Some words now in a were also anciently a, so that the old a was made up of words now pronounced with o, i, a.

Medial ya occurred in many words where now i is found, as in king "metropolis," formerly kiang. This we learn from foreign transcriptions.

The letter e is now in Peking heard nearly like o, in she "to forgive," and such words. In southern Mandarin it is more like itself and Morrison's spelling with ay represents it well for English learners. The i of ti "brother" was formerly e. This we learn from the Mongol degu, and the Fukien te "brother."

Words in Tyt's class XV. may all have had the vowel e in the days of antiquity. Among them wei "to fear," kwei "return," pei "pitiful," etc., have nearly kept their old sound till the present time. For though we write ei, the sound may be stated to be that which we mean by e in the French bonté.

Where we now have medial ie there was formerly only e, as in tien "heaven," which the Japanese and Corean transcriptions show was a thousand years ago t'en.

The vowel i occurs in ancient Chinese in some words still possessing it, as yi "easy." Many words now pronounced with i, in Sir Thomas Wade's spelling ih, had formerly i. Such are chi "branch," chi "know." Not a few words now ending in i, as ti "emperor," had formerly ik for their final.

Since anciently tsi "son" and lai "come" rhymed together, we may expect lai, which retains its sound in Fukien, to have been permanent since the time of the Odes.

The letter o has gone through great vicissitudes. Many words now sounded with au were formerly pronounced with o or ok. Such are mau "hair," kiau "instruct." Kia "house" was ko. So also was ku "cause." What is now called tung "east," was formerly tong, and probably at a still earlier time, tom.

Many words now pronounced with medial a, as c'hang "long," wang "to be lost," were formerly heard with medial o, as dom, mom.

The vowels u and ü have both been in extensive use in China. Many words now ending in au, eu, and ieu, were formerly pronounced with the vowel u only. Thus kieu "to investigate," and tsau "to make," were ku and dzu, with a final k still clinging to them which has been long since lost. In Fukien at present, yeu "to have," is still u or wu, as we write it commonly. Many words now heard with medial a had formerly u. Such are yang "sheep,” yiung. Here we cannot clearly distinguish between o and u. The modern medial a may have come from an ancient medial o or u or both.