glue it is even then almost impossible to prevent buckling. It is there fore a material not suited to the codices, and it has not been used for any of those records that the writer has examined. That a texture manufactured from bark was employed by the Mexicans for such purpose may be verified by a visit to the Museo Nacional, where an ancient plan is displayed which is painted on a sheet of softened bark apparently derived from the mulberry tree. Walter Hough.
The Adopted Indian Word " Poquosin"— Mr W. R. Gerard in the last number of this journal, criticises my article on the word "Poquosin" in the January number, and presents certain ideas of his own, veiled in learned grammatical diction, which cover a multitude of errors and mislead the unwary.
During my study of the name Poquosin and its equivalents, the root pâkwa, " shallow," which he favors, presented itself among other possible derivatives, but it was rejected as not being applicable to the many localities, and not sufficiently descriptive of the causes which led to the use of the term by the Amerind and its adoption by the European. The root pâkwa in all dialects was employed more to designate shallow flats or sand-bars in a river, which more or less obstructed the navigation of canoes, than to inundated tracts subject to the widening or opening out of streams or ponds, which made the trails or paths impassable. The root poqua, " to open," " to break out," on the other hand, describes these peculiarities far better, as was set forth in my paper, and as numerous abstracts from early records and writers not quoted, as well as personal visits and correspondence, bear ample witness. Mr Gerard, in rejecting the diminutive form of the locative case which J used correctly in accordance with many authorities, and employing in its place the terminal of the inanimate third person singu- lar (Howse, Grammar of the Cree p. 26), has made a great blunder, for he should know that it is contrary to Algonquian nomenclature to use this verbal affix as a locative. If it were proper and possible, why should I not have used it with the radical poqua-, viz., poquo-sin ? The reason I did not, was because it would have been bad grammar, for it expresses quality, not location, just the same as does its English equivalent. The examples I quoted of this verbal form from the Ojibwa and Abnaki were simply for comparison of the radical and its application. An Amerind might say in Nipissing, pakwisan, " it is shallow," or " it touches bottom," " runs aground," as Cuoq translates it, but he would never use the expression to name " a shallow-place " ; neither would he say poquosin " it is open," in the place of poquo-es-ing, # at the widening." (The final vowel is frequently lost in local names.) In
