most convenient _measure_ of value." And what
would this mean? _Sheep_ is not singular, unless limited to that number by
some definitive word; and _cattle_ I conceive to be incapable of any such
limitation.

OBS. 27.--Of the last class of words above cited, some may assume an
additional _es_, when taken plurally; as, _summonses, gallowses, chintses_:
the rest either want the plural, or have it seldom and without change of
form. _Corps_, a body of troops, is a French word, which, when singular, is
pronounced _c=ore_, and when plural, _c=ores_. But _corpse_, a dead body,
is an English word, pronounced _k~orps_, and making the plural in two
syllables, _corpses_. _Summonses_ is given in Cobb's Dictionary as the
plural of _summons_; but some authors have used the latter with a plural
verb: as, "But Love's first _summons_ seldom _are_ obey'd."--_Waller's
Poems_, p. 8. Dr. Johnson says this noun is from the verb _to summon_; and,
if this is its origin, the singular ought to be _a summon_, and then
_summons_ would be a regular plural. But this "singular noun with a plural
termination," as Webster describes it, more probably originated from the
Latin verb _submoneas_, used in the writ, and came to us through the jargon
of law, in which we sometimes hear men talk of "_summonsing_ witnesses."
The authorities for it, however, are good enough; as, "_This_ present
_summons_."--SHAK.: _Joh. Dict._ "_This summons_ he resolved to
disobey."--FELL: _ib._ _Chints_ is called by Cobb a "substantive _plural_"
and defined as "cotton _cloths_, made in India;" but other lexicographers
define it as singular, and Worcester (perhaps more properly) writes it
_chintz_. Johnson cites Pope as speaking of "_a charming chints_," and I
have somewhere seen the plural formed by adding es. "Of the Construction of
single Words, or _Serieses_ of Words."--_Ward's Gram._, p. 114. Walker, in
his Elements of Elocution, makes frequent use of the word "_serieses_," and
of the phrase "_series of serieses_." But most writers, I suppose, would
doubt the propriety of this practice; because, in Latin, all nouns of the
fifth declension, such as _caries, congeries, series, species,
superficies_, make their nominative and vocative cases alike in both
numbers. This, however, is no rule for writing English. Dr. Blair has used
the word _species_ in a plural sense; though I think he ought rather to
have preferred the regular English word _kinds_: "The higher _species_ of
poetry