OBS. 19.—­Of nouns purely English, the following thirteen are the only simple words that form distinct plurals not ending in s or es, and four of these are often regular:  man, men; woman, women; child, children; brother, brethren or brothers; ox, oxen; goose, geese; foot, feet; tooth, teeth; louse, lice; mouse, mice; die, dice or dies; penny, pence or pennies; pea, pease or peas.  The word brethren is now applied only to fellow-members of the same church or fraternity; for sons of the same parents we always use brothers; and this form is sometimes employed in the other sense. Dice are spotted cubes for gaming; dies are stamps for coining money, or for impressing metals. Pence, as six pence, refers to the amount of money in value; pennies denotes the corns themselves.  “We write peas, for two or more individual seeds; but pease, for an indefinite number in quantity or bulk."_—­Webster’s Dict._ This last anomaly, I think, might well enough “be spared; the sound of the word being the same, and the distinction to the eye not always regarded.”  Why is it not as proper, to write an order for “a bushel of peas,” as for “a bushel of beans?” “Peas and beans may be severed from the ground before they be quite dry."_—­Cobbett’s E. Gram._, 31.

OBS. 20.—­When a compound, ending with any of the foregoing irregular words, is made plural, it follows the fashion of the word with which it ends:  as, Gentleman, gentlemen; bondwoman, bondwomen; foster-child, foster-children; solan-goose, solan-geese; eyetooth, eyeteeth; woodlouse, woodlice;[143] dormouse, dormice; half-penny, halfpence, half-pennies.  In this way, these irregularities extend to many words; though some of the metaphorical class, as kite’s-foot, colts-foot, bear’s-foot, lion’s-foot, being names of plants, have no plural.  The word man, which is used the most frequently in this way, makes more than seventy such compounds.  But there are some words of this ending, which, not being compounds of man, are regular:  as, German, Germans; Turcoman, Turcomans; Mussulman, Mussulmans; talisman, talismans; leman, lemans; caiman, caimans.

OBS. 21.—­Compounds, in general, admit but one variation to form the plural, and that must be made in the principal word, rather than in the adjunct; but where the terms differ little in importance, the genius of the language obviously inclines to a variation of the last only.  Thus we write fathers-in-law, sons-in-law, knights-errant, courts-martial, cousins-german, hangers-on, comings-in, goings-out, goings-forth, varying the first; and manhaters, manstealers, manslayers, maneaters, mandrills, handfuls, spoonfuls, mouthfuls, pailfuls, outpourings, ingatherings, downsittings, overflowings, varying the last.  So, in many instances, when there is a less intimate connexion