to be a "_Grammar of the Huron Language, by a Missionary of the
Village of Huron Indians, near Quebec, found amongst the papers of the
Mission, and translated from the Latin, by the Rev. John Wilkie_."
This translation is published in the "_Transactions of the Literary
and Historical Society of Quebec_," for 1831, and fills more than a
hundred octavo pages. It is a work evidently of great labor, and is
devoted chiefly to the variations of the verbs; yet its lack of
completeness may be judged from the single fact that the "transitions,"
or in other words, the combinations of the double pronouns, nominative
and objective, with the transitive verb, which form such an important
feature of the language, are hardly noticed; and, it may be added,
though the conjugations are mentioned, they are not explained. The work,
indeed, would rather perplex than aid an investigator, and gives no
proper idea of the character and richness of the language. The same may
be said of the grammatical notices comprised in the Latin "Proemium" to
Bruyas' Iroquois dictionary. These notices are apparently modeled to
some extent on this anonymous grammar of the Huron language,--unless,
indeed, the latter may have been copied from Bruyas; the rules which
they give being in several instances couched in the same words.

Some useful grammatical explanations are found in the anonymous Onondaga
dictionary of the seventeenth century, published by Dr. Shea in his
"_Library of American Linguistics_." But by far the most valuable
contribution to our knowledge of the structure of this remarkable group
of languages is found in the works of a distinguished writer of our own
day, the Rev. J. A. Cuoq, of Montreal, eminent both as a missionary and
as a philologist. After twenty years of labor among the Iroquois and
Algonkin tribes in the Province of Quebec, M. Cuoq was led to appear as
an author by his desire to defend his charges against the injurious
effect of a judgment which had been pronounced by a noted authority.