600
frequent the rocky cliffs."--_Balbi's Geog._, p. 231. "Bullocks, sheep, and fowls."--_Ib._, p. 439. "Cannon is used alike in both numbers."--_Everest's Gram._, p. 48. "Cannon and shot may be used in the singular or plural sense."--_O. B. Peirce's Gram._, p. 37. "The column in the Place Vendome is one hundred and thirty-four feet high, and is made of the brass of the cannons taken from the Austrians and Prussians."--_Balbi's Geog._, p. 249. "As his cannons roar."--_Dryden's Poems_, p. 81. "Twenty shot of his greatest cannon."--CLARENDON: _Joh. Dict._ "Twenty _shots_" would here, I think, be more proper, though the word is not made plural when it means little balls of lead. "And cannons conquer armies."--Hudibras,
Part III, Canto iii,
l. 249."Healths to both kings, attended with the roar Of cannons echoed from th' affrighted shore."--Waller, p. 7.
OBS. 39.--Of foreign nouns, many retain their original plural; a few are defective; and some are redundant, because the English form is also in use. Our writers have laid many languages under contribution, and thus furnished an abundance of irregular words, necessary to be explained, but never to be acknowledged as English till they conform to our own rules.
1. Of nouns in _a, saliva_, spittle, and scoria, dross, have no occasion for the plural; lamina, a thin plate, makes _laminæ_; macula, a spot, _maculæ_; minutia, a little thing, _minutiæ_; nebula, a mist, _nebulæ_; siliqua, a pod, _siliqiuæ_. Dogma makes dogmas or _dogmata_; _exanthema, exanthemas_ or _exanthemata_; miasm or _miasma, miasms_ or _miasmata_; _stigma, stigmas_ or stigmata.
2. Of nouns in um, some have no n