seldom _admit_ it."--_Rhet._, p. 403. _Specie_, meaning hard money,
though derived or corrupted from _species_, is not the singular of that
word; nor has it any occasion for a plural form, because we never speak of
_a specie_. The plural of _gallows_, according to Dr. Webster, is
_gallowses_; nor is that form without other authority, though some say,
_gallows_ is of both numbers and not to be varied: "_Gallowses_ were
occasionally put in order by the side of my windows."--_Leigh Hunt's
Byron_, p. 369.

"Who would not guess there might be hopes,
The fear of _gallowses_ and ropes,
Before their eyes, might reconcile
Their animosities a while?"--_Hudibras_, p. 90.

OBS. 28.--Though the plural number is generally derived from the singular,
and of course must as generally imply its existence, we have examples, and
those not a few, in which the case is otherwise. Some nouns, because they
signify such things as nature or art has made plural or double; some,
because they have been formed from other parts of speech by means of the
plural ending which belongs to nouns; and some, because they are compounds
in which a plural word is principal, and put last, are commonly used in the
plural number only, and have, in strict propriety, no singular. Though
these three classes of plurals may not be perfectly separable, I shall
endeavour to exhibit them in the order of this explanation.

1. Plurals in meaning and form: _analects, annals,[144] archives, ashes,
assets, billiards, bowels, breeches, calends, cates, chops, clothes,
compasses, crants, eaves, embers, estovers, forceps, giblets, goggles,
greaves, hards_ or _hurds, hemorrhoids, ides, matins, nippers, nones,
obsequies, orgies,[145] piles, pincers_ or _pinchers, pliers, reins,
scissors, shears, skittles, snuffers, spectacles, teens, tongs, trowsers,
tweezers, umbles, vespers, victuals_.

2. Plurals by formation, derived chiefly from adjectives: _acoustics,
aeronautics, analytics, bitters, catoptrics, commons, conics, credentials,
delicates, dioptrics, economics, ethics, extraordinaries, filings, fives,
freshes, glanders, gnomonics, goods, hermeneutics, hustings, hydrodynamics,
hydrostatics, hydraulics, hysterics, inwards, leavings, magnetics,
mathematics, measles, mechanics, mnemonics, merils, metaphysics, middlings,
movables, mumps, nuptials, optics, phonics, phonetics, physics,[146]
pneumatics, poetics, politics, riches, rickets, settlings, shatters,
skimmings,