A friend says : " Please excuse me for the liberty I take, of suggesting a small matter connected with correct grammar in horticulture, for some of the correspondents of the Gardeners' Monthly. It seems desirable that writers on horticultural subjects should not fall into mistakes. Some writers make the word thrips, the name of a small insect, in the plural number, with "thrip" for the singular. (See p. 109, April number.) The termination coming from the Greek letter ps (x), cannot be correctly changed by dropping the s for the singular, any more than making len the singular for lens, or cutting off a part of the x in box. Several other scientific persons adopt the error, among the rest Prof. Forbes, of Illinois".

[Our friend is certainly right. It should be thrips whether singular or plural, just as we say scissors or sheep; and yet we are sorry that it must be so - sorry that we are not permitted to alter an adopted word, when it interferes with the genius of the English language in regard to its grammatical forms, and that thus it becomes necessary for the grammarian in giving rules to note exceptions so numerous, that in the end there is really no rule at all. In the writer's younger days, it seemed too bad that one could not say sheeps when more than one sheep was intended, or a scissor, when we meant only one scissors, that we had to introduce a superfluous word in order to explain our meaning - that we should have to say a "pair" of scissors when we meant only one, and a "flock" of sheep when we referred to more than one. And even yet, if he had a few men of mettle to back him up, he would insist on saying thrip when he meant only one insect, or the one class, and thrips whenever the plural was intended. And remembering that the "blood of the martyr is the seed of the church," he might even go further and risk the fate of a reformer.

But it is not so clear that the seed he might sow would, after all, get a chance to develop, so a thrips let it be.