The Grammar of English Grammars, page 598 by Gould Brown
<< Return to Title Details & Download599
of three or four acres with carps and tench."--HALE: _ib., w. Carp_. "Having stored a very great pond with _carps, tench_, and other _pond-fish_, and only put in two small pikes, this pair of tyrants in seven years devoured the whole."--_Id., ib., w. Tench_. "Singular, _tench_; plural, tenches."--_Brightland's Gram._, p. 78. "The polar bear preys upon _seals, fish_, and the carcasses of whales."--_Balbi's Geog._, p. 172. "Trouts and salmons swim against the stream."--BACON: _Ward's Gram._, p. 130.
"'Tis true no turbots dignify my boards, But _gudgeons, flounders_, what my Thames affords."--Pope.
OBS. 38.--Prom the foregoing examples it would seem, if fish or fishes are often spoken of without a regular distinction of the grammatical numbers, it is not because the words are not susceptible of the inflection, but because there is some difference of meaning between the mere name of the sort and the distinct modification in regard to number. There are also other nouns in which a like difference may be observed. Some names of building materials, as _brick, stone, plank, joist_, though not destitute of regular plurals, as _bricks, stones, planks, joists_, and not unadapted to ideas distinctly singular, as _a brick, a stone, a plank, a joist_, are nevertheless sometimes used in a plural sense without the s, and sometimes in a sense which seems hardly to embrace the idea of either number; as, "Let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly."--_Gen._, xi, 3. "And they had brick for stone."--_Ib._ "The tale of bricks."--_Exod._, v, 8 and 18. "Make brick."--_Ib._, v, 16. "From your bricks."--_Ib._, v, 19. "Upon altars of brick."--Isaiah. lxv, 3. "The bricks are fallen down."--_Ib._, ix, 10. The same variety of usage occurs in respect to a few other words, and sometimes perhaps without good reason; as, "Vast numbers of sea fowl