in the direction of crescere; and the O. Fr. cressonage, implying a verb cressoner, means the right of grazing.—­Under dock Mr. Wedgwood would seem (he does not make himself quite clear) to refer It. doccia to a root analogous with dyke and ditch.  He cites Prov. doga, which he translates by bank.  Raynouard has only “dogua, douve, creux, cavite,” and refers to It. doga.  The primary meaning seems rather the hollow than the bank, though this would matter little, as the same transference of meaning may have taken place as in dyke and ditch, But when Mr. Wedgwood gives mill-dam as the first meaning of the word doccia, his wish seems to have stood godfather.  Diez establishes the derivation of doccia from ductus; and certainly the sense of a channel to lead (ducere) water in any desired direction is satisfactory.  The derivative signification of doccia (a gouge, a tool to make channels with) coincides.  Moreover, we have the masculine form doccio, answering exactly to the Sp. ducho in aguaducho, the o for u, as in doge for duce, from the same root ducere.  Another instance of Mr. Wedgwood’s preferring the bird in the bush is to be found in his refusing to consider dout, to extinguish, (do out,) as analogous to don, doff_, and dup.  He would rather connect it with toedten, tuer.  He cites as allied words Bohemian dusyti, to choke, to extinguish; Polish dusic, to choke, stifle, quell; and so arrives at the English slang phrase, “dowse the glim.”  As we find several other German words in thieves’ English, we have little doubt that dowse is nothing more than thu’ aus, do (thou) out, which would bring us back to our starting-point.

We have picked out a few instances in which we think Mr. Wedgwood demonstrably mistaken, because they show the temptation which is ever lying in wait to lead the theoretical etymologist astray.  Mr. Wedgwood sometimes seems to reverse the natural order of things, and to reason backward from the simple to the more complex.  He does not always respect the boundaries of legitimate deduction.  On the other hand, his case becomes very strong where he finds relations of thought as well as of sound between whole classes of words in different languages.  But it is very difficult to say how long ago instinctive imitation ceased and other elements are to be admitted as operative.  We see words continually coming into vogue whose apparent etymologies, if all historical data of their origin were lost, would inevitably mislead.  If we did not know, for example, the occasion which added the word chouse to the English language, we have little doubt that the twofold analogy of form and meaning would have led etymologists to the German kosen, (with the very common softening of the k to