If new
combinations of thought are evolved in the progress of society, dialects
will readily supply the required names from the store of their so-called
superfluous words. There are not only local and provincial, but also class
dialects. There is a dialect of shepherds, of sportsmen, of soldiers, of
farmers. I suppose there are few persons here present who could tell the
exact meaning of a horse's poll, crest, withers, dock, hamstring, cannon,
pastern, coronet, arm, jowl, and muzzle. Where the literary language
speaks of the young of all sorts of animals, farmers, shepherds, and
sportsmen would be ashamed to use so general a term.

"The idiom of nomads," as Grimm says, "contains an abundant wealth of
manifold expressions for sword and weapons, and for the different stages
in the life of their cattle. In a more highly cultivated language these
expressions become burthensome and superfluous. But, in a peasant's mouth,
the bearing, calving, falling, and killing of almost every animal has its
own peculiar term, as the sportsman delights in calling the gait and
members of game by different names. The eye of these shepherds, who live
in the free air, sees further, their ear hears more sharply,--why should
their speech not have gained that living truth and variety?"

Thus Juliana Berners, lady prioress of the nunnery of Sopwell in the
fifteenth century, the reputed author of the book of St. Albans, informs
us that we must not use names of multitudes promiscuously, but we are to
say, "a congregacyon of people, a hoost of men, a felyshyppynge of yomen,
and a bevy of ladies; we must speak of a herde of dere, swannys, cranys,
or wrenys, a sege of herons or bytourys, a muster of pecockes, a watche of
nyghtyngales, a flyghte of doves, a claterynge of choughes, a pryde of
lyons, a slewthe of beeres, a gagle of geys, a skulke of foxes, a sculle
of frerys, a pontificality of prestys, a bomynable syght of monkes, and a
superfluyte of nonnes," and so of other human and brute assemblages. In
like manner, in dividing game for the table, the animals were not carved,
but "a dere was broken, a gose reryd, chekyn frusshed, a cony unlaced, a
crane dysplayed, a curlewe unioynted, a quayle wynggyd, a swanne lyfte, a
lambe sholdered, a heron dysmembryd, a pecocke dysfygured, a samon chynyd,
a hadoke sydyd, a sole loynyd, and a breme splayed."(52)

What, however, I wanted particularly to point out in this lecture is this,
that neither of the cause