OBS. 2.—­Thus, while Pitman, Comstock, and others, are amusing themselves with the folly of inventing new “Phonetic Alphabets,” or of overturning all orthography to furnish “a character for each of the 38 elementary sounds,” more or fewer, one of the acutest observers among our grammarians can fix on no number more definite or more considerable than thirty-one, thirty-two, or thirty-three; and the finding of these he announces with a “perhaps,” and the admission that other writers object to as many as five of the questionable number.  Churchill’s vowel sounds, he says, “may be found in the following words:  1.  B_a_te, 2.  B_a_t, 3.  B_a_ll; 4.  B_e_t, 5.  B_e_; 6.  B_i_t; 7.  B_o_t, 8.  B_o_ne, 9.  B_oo_n; 10.  B_u_t, 11.  B_u_ll; 12.  Lovel_y_; 13. Wool.”—­New Grammar, p. 5.  To this he adds:  “Many of the writers on orthoepy [sic—­KTH], however, consider the first and fourth of the sounds above distinguished as actually the same, the former differing from the latter only by being lengthened in the pronunciation.  They also reckon the seventh sound, to be the third shortened; the twelfth, the fifth shortened; and the eleventh, the ninth shortened.  Some consider the fifth and sixth as differing only in length; and most esteem the eleventh and thirteenth as identical.”—­Ib.

OBS. 3.—­Now, it is plain, that these six identifications, or so many of them as are admitted, must diminish by six, or by the less number allowed, the thirteen vowel sounds enumerated by this author.  By the best authorities, W initial, as in “Wool.” is reckoned a consonant; and, of course, its sound is supposed to differ in some degree from that of oo in “B_oo_n,” or that of u in “B_u_ll,”—­the ninth sound or the eleventh in the foregoing series.  By Walker, Murray, and other popular writers, the sound of y in “Lovel_y_” is accounted to be essentially the same as that of e in “B_e_.”  The twelfth and the thirteenth, then, of this list, being removed, and three others added,—­namely, the a heard in far, the i in fine, and the u in fuse,—­we shall have the fourteen vowel sounds which are enumerated by L. Murray and others, and adopted by the author of the present work.

OBS. 4.—­Wells says, “A has six sounds:—­1.  Long; as in late. 2.  Grave; as in father. 3.  Broad; as in fall. 4.  Short; as in man. 5.  The sound heard in care, hare. 6.  Intermediate between a in man and a in father; as in grass, pass, branch.”—­School Grammar, 1850, p. 33.  Besides these six, Worcester recognizes a seventh sound,—­the “A obscure; as in liar, rival”—­Univ. and Crit.  Dict., p. ix.  Such a multiplication of the oral elements of our first vowel.—­or, indeed, any extension of them beyond four,—­appears to me to be unadvisable; because it not only makes