ders;--the _masculine_, the _feminine_,
the _common_, and the _neuter_."--_School Gram._, 1st Ed., p. 49. [Those]
"Nouns which are applicable _alike to both sexes_, are of the _common_
gender."--_Ib._ This then is manifestly no gender under the foregoing
definition, and the term _neuter_ is made somewhat less appropriate by the
adoption of a third denomination before it. Nor is there less absurdity in
the phraseology with which Murray proposes to avoid the recognition of the
_common gender_: "Thus we may say, _Parents_ is a noun of the _masculine
and feminine_ gender; _Parent_, if doubtful, is of the _masculine or
feminine_ gender; and _Parent_, if the gender is known by the construction,
is of the gender so ascertained."--_Gram._, 8vo, p. 39. According to this,
we must have _five genders_, exclusive of that which is called _common_;
namely, the _masculine_, the _feminine_, the _neuter_, the _androgynal_,
and the _doubtful_.

OBS. 4.--It is plain that many writers on grammar have had but a confused
notion of what a gender really is. Some of them, confounding gender with
sex, deny that there are more than two genders, because there are only two
sexes. Others, under a like mistake, resort occasionally, (as in the
foregoing instance,) to an _androgynal_, and also to a _doubtful_ gender:
both of which are more objectionable than the _common gender_ of the old
grammarians; though this _common_ "distinction with regard to sex," is, in
our language, confessedly, no distinction at all. I assume, that there are
in English the three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, and no more;
and that every noun and every pronoun must needs be of some gender;
consequently, of some one of these three. A gender is, literally, a sort, a
kind, a sex. But genders, _in grammar_, are attributes of words, rather
than of persons, or animals, or things; whereas sexes are attributes, not
of words, but of living creatures. He who understands this, will perceive
that the absence of sex in some things, is as good a basis for a
grammatical distinction, as the presence or the difference of it in others;
nor can it be denied, that the neuter, according to my definition, is a
gender, is a distinction "in _regard_ to sex," though it does not embrace
either of the sexes. There are therefore three genders, and only three.

OBS. 5.--Generic names, even when construed as masculine or feminine, often
virtually include both sexes; as, "Hast thou given _the hors