TO HUCKLEBERRY MOUNTAIN. A VACATION TRIP. Having spent about three weeks of my vacation at home in working and resting, I was prepared to receive favorably any proposition to relieve the monotony, when a fellow student, living not many miles from my home, proposed a huckleberry trip. I agreed to his proposition readily, though was less eager for it than he, for I knew from a former experience what a "huckleberry trip" meant.

It meant for us the securing of a good team and strong wagon with an experienced driver, or rather one experienced in huckleberrying; a ride of thirty miles, some of the way over the roughest roads this side of the Rocky Mountains; a sojourn of one or two days on the mountain miles away from civilization, during which time we must be our own cooks and at night must sleep under the broad canopy of the sky-a very pleasant part of the programme if it did not rain; and, in addition to all this, perils of robbers, perils of rattlesnakes, perils of "rain on the mountain," and the perils of a great deal of hard work in picking the berries if we found any.

Preparations completed, we started about four oclock on the morning of July 23d. Our party consisted of four, the driver, his son, and ourselves. We had a good team and a strong platform

spring wagon.

Our outfit was imposing. One might have supposed, but for our conduct perhaps, that we had started on a missionary tour to the Choctaws with six months' provisions. We had a whole culinary department except a cookstove and a few other minor articles, a supply of robes and blankets, and a quantity of pails and boxes, and a bag of oats and a huge bundle of hay for the horses.

It was nearly noon when we reached the mountain. After we had begun the ascent, it occurred to our friend C. that a “jug" of milk would be necessary to use with our tea and coffee, for you must know that we had tea and coffee. Accordingly he jumped out and over the fence where some cows were quietly grazing and proceeded to negotiate with the one nearest him for some milk, but she wouldn't negotiate. He tried another, and still another, but no amount of coaxing could render them approachable. They evidently were not in the habit of being milked at noon. He returned to the wagon disappointed at his failure and chagrined at furnishing us such cheap amusement. Of course he was going to hunt up the

owner of the kine and pay him for the milk, for he afterwards stopped at a house and bought some.

Hatch Mountain, as it is called, is divided into two peaks, the right and the left. We had decided to go on the left, and so were prepared for any misdirections which the "professional" pickers might give us. There is a certain class of people known as "Pooles’’ who make it a business to pick and sell the berries during the season. It is to their interest to keep the numerous strangers in ignorance of the best picking and to send them just the wrong way.

Knowing this propensity of theirs, we amused ourselves by asking the parties we met where the best picking was, and almost invariably they would advise us to go to the right mountain, whereupon we went to the left as we had intended.

The road is the same for both peaks till near the top of the mountain when it divides to the right and to the left. At this point is a shanty dignified with the name of grocery, where huckleberries and drinks are kept for sale and where strangers are kindly sent off to the right.

These roads are indescribable. The way we were bumped about in the wagon reminded me of Gough's descent into the Yosemite Valley. That was the only point of resemblance however between our ride and his. For once walking was preferable to riding. We reached the spot which we chose for our headquarters about two p. m., and had driven nearly two miles from the spring. By three o'clock we had eaten a very hearty dinner and were ready to begin work. The berries were not as plenty as formally, but still were plenty. Just before dark we made a fire to prepare our tea and soon after put ourselves to bed, two of us in the wagon and two under it. The mountain air was conducive to sound sleep, and we were up early and at work.

We had intended doing something for science during the night, by way of observations on Coggia's comet, but we only observed that the comet didn't appear that night.

About noon we met again at camp, and C. and I mounted the horses and rode to the spring for water. Water was never so heavy. We had to carry it in pails on horseback over about two miles of the roughest roads imaginable. So far all had gone well with us except that two of the party had been lost and one had been sick; but at noon my monitor within, i. e. my stomach, warned me not to

venture out again, for I had eaten two many berries and was in fact, sick. So in the afternoon I watched the wagon, sleeping most of the time on a robe in the shade.

About six p. m. we gathered up and started homeward. We must be off the mountain before dark or run the risk of a "smash up." Before leaving the mountain we bought a few berries at the grocery and then set out for a night's ride.

The loss of two hats by sleeping passengers and the rousing of the ferryman at the hour "when church-yards yawn" were the only events which interested our tired crew till we arrived at our destination about three oclock a. m.

We had several bushels of berries, and the weather was the very finest, not even dew having fallen while we were on the mountain. Altogether we had a very successful trip, having escaped rain, accident, ruffians, and rattlesnakes, all of which are abundant on Huckleberry Mountain. The only wild animal seen by the party was a toad reported by our boy. The next night after we left, the grocers were stabbed by some roughs who attempted to "clear the shanty" because they were refused whiskey, but the wounds were not fatal as was at first reported. T. E. W.

EXTRACT OF AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION.

DELIVERED AT ITS MEETING IN HARTFORD, CONN., JULY 14th, BY THE PRESIDENT, PROFESSOR MARCH, OF LAFAYETTE COLLEGE (EASTON, PENN.)

The last year has been one of wide activity in original work upon language, though it has produced no book which is yet seen to mark

a new era.

THREE SIGNIFICANT FACTS.

Perhaps no facts have occurred more significant than these three : Pott's great lexicon of Roots has been completed; an English dialect society has been formed under the direction of Mr. Skeat and the inspiration of Mr. Ellis; and a grammar has been published of the speech of the primitive population of Babylonia, which is claimed to be a representative of the parent speech of the so-called Turanian or Scythian family of languages, and to be likely to play

the same part in reducing the languages to order which the Sanskrit has done in the Indo-European family.

CHANGE IN LINGUISTIC STUDIES.

These three facts may be taken as representative of a great change that is taking place in the current of linguistic activity. The study of the ancient literary monuments of the Indo-European speeches has heretofore constituted linguistics or comparative philology; but it is now giving place to the study of living dialects on the one hand and the relics of the ancestors of barbaric tribes on the other. The more sober western leaders of the new generation are trying to ground the laws of language into physiological necessities and the facts of living dialects; the more adventurous, who seek to solve the wider problems of philology and turn to the east for more light, are leaving the familiar fields of the Indo-Europeans and looking to strange and puzzling speeches to find worthy spheres for conquest. THE YEAR'S WORK.

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It will suggest the extent of the study of dialects to mention a few of the essays of the year. The English Dialect Society is vigorously at work collecting all the living varieties of English speech, and asking our aid. With it should be put A. J. Ellis's work on "The English Dialects in Great Britain and America," forming part of his great work on "Early English Pronunciation; J. A. H. Murray's "Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland; Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte on "The English Dialects" in the Philological Society's Proceedings; Sweet on "Danish Pronunciation; John Winkler's "General Netherland and Frisiah Dialecticon, a thousand solid Dutch pages on the continental Low Germon Dialects; Tobler on The Aspirates and Tenues in the Dialects of Switzerland," an excellent paper in Kuhn's Zeitschrift; Halevy on "The Dialect of the Jews of Abyssinia; " the Abbe Martin on "The Chief Aramaic Dialects;" Dr. Bleek on "Grimm's Law in South Africa;'" Dr. Carter Blake on "The Dialects of Nicaragua ;" Mr. Thomas on "The French of the West Indian Negroes," especially at Trinidad; Professor Hart on "The Language of the Amazons," in our transactions, and most notable of all its kind, Professor Trumbull's "Notes on Forty Versions of the Lord's Prayer in the Algonquin Languages." The greater part of this work on dialects is done with scientific caution and is in full accord with the best scholarship of the old school.