Sept. 2. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



191 



and a "Notice des principaux Ouvrages de Charles 

 Bossut," at the end ; neither of which are appen- 

 ded to the translation. Two volumes octavo. 



In the above, as in the following description, I 

 adhere, as nearly as may be, to the form pre- 

 scribed by Professoe De Morgan : 



London, eighteen-three [Bonnycastle, J. ?] ; A 

 General History of Mathematics, from the Earliest 

 Times to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, 

 translated from the French of John [Charles, 

 ante, pp. 4. and 48.] Bossut. This work is a 

 translation of the Essai. One volume octavo. 



I have not seen either the Histoire, or a transla- 

 tion of it. 



The paragraph at p. 482. of the Gentleman's 

 Magazine for 1821, noted by Mr. De Morgan, 

 contains, I find, a reference to a preceding page 

 (472.) of the same volume. But at neither place 

 do I see allusion made to the fact of Bonnycastle 

 having been connected with any other work of 

 Bossut than his Histoire. Hence, if the " transla- 

 tion" mentioned by Professor De Morgan {Re- 

 ferences, 1842, p. 7.) be a translation of the Histoire, 

 Bonnycastle's claim to the authorship of that of 

 the Essai would remain unimpeached. The coin- 

 cidences as to the preface and list seem, however, 

 to exclude this view. Were there no other proof 

 of a translation of the Histoire than is to be found 

 in those pages of the Gentleman^ s Magazine, I 

 should be inclined to doubt its existence ; and to 

 think that the writers had been misled by the 

 imperfect translation of the title of the Essai. 



It has been stated {Pen. Cyc, art. Bossut), 

 apparently on the authority of Delambre, that the 

 Histoire of 1810 is a second edition (of the 

 Essai?). 



In addition to the references which I have 

 already given {ante, p. 48.), it must be added, that 

 the name of Geminus occurs in the text of p. 106. 

 of Barocius's Proclus. The index of that work is 

 very defective in regard to Eudemus as well as to 

 Geminus. The name of Eudemus will be found 

 in the text of p. 264., in the margin of p. 69., and 

 in both text and margin of pp. 71. 171. (misnum- 

 bered 161.) 191. 212. and 228. of the edition of 

 Barocius. 



Proclus does not, I think, give the title of any 

 work of Geminus, although he cites (p. 71.) the 

 Liber de Angulo, and (p. 212.) the Geometricee 

 Enarrationes of Eudemus. He speaks of Geminus 

 as a philosopher and investigator; of Eudemus 

 (except at p. 71.) as a historian. 



It is strange that, under these circumstances, 

 Montucia should, in his first edition (Pref. 

 p. xyii.), mention by name the Enarrationes of 

 Geminus, and yet omit to give the title of the 

 work of Eudemus. In the preface to his second 

 edition, neither work is expressly named. 



That Proclus was indebted to Theophrastus, 

 must, I think, be shown by collateral evidence. 



At least, I am not aware that his obligations ap- 

 pear on the face of the Commentaries on Euclid. 

 James Cockle, M.A., F.R.S.A. 



4. Pump Court, Temple. 



RUSSIAN LANGUAGE. 



(Vol. X., p. 145.) 



The following extract from Kaltschmidt's Ger- 

 man translation of Eichhoff's Parallele des Langues 

 de V Europe et de VInde, Paris, 1836 (Leipzig, 

 1 840), will answer authoritatively several of Mr. 

 Cyrus Bedding's Queries : 



" The Slavonian family of languages which occupies 

 the east of Europe, divides itself into three branches : that 

 we name the Servian, the Tchechish, and the Lettish. 



" The Servian comprehends the eastern Slaves, whose 

 language was the old Slavonic ; for which, in the ninth 

 century, Cyril invented the alphabet used in his writ- 

 ings. The Slavonic has produced more living dia- 

 lects in Illyria and Servia; one, the dead and church 

 language, has been displaced in use in Eussia by the 

 Russian, from which it differs but little. The Russian 

 language, little known amongst us, approaches the Greek 

 and German in its wealth in roots, in the regularity of its 

 derivation, and felicity of its compounds ; exceeding the 

 German in softness and euphony: the Russian requires 

 only other authors, like Karamsin, for its further culti- 

 vation. 



"The Tchechish, or second branch, that of the west 

 Slaves, includes the Bohemian, formerly a cultivated lan- 

 guage, of which the Slovack, in Hungary, is a rude 

 dialect ; the Polish, like the high-minded and unfortunate 

 people that speak it, a lively and flexible tongue ; and 

 the Wendish and Sorbish, languages still uncultivated, are 

 spread over the Saxon provinces. 



" The third branch, or Lettish, is that of the middle 

 Slaves, differing considerably from both the other, and is 

 probably an elder branch, of which the original language, 

 the old Prussian, is whollj' lost ; but the Lithuanian and 

 the Lettish, spoken in Lithuania and Courland, offer to 

 the linguist very attractive materials for comparison with 

 the other Slavonian dialects, whose original forms they 

 disclose, and with the Indian languages, from which they 

 appear to have immediately sprung." 



The Slavonic alphabet was supplied from the 

 Greek by Cyril, and included all the letters from 

 alpha to omega, except theta; and adding tsy, 

 tchero, cha, chtcha, ierr, iery, iere, iate, e, iou, ia, 

 phita, and yitsa. The Russian retains all these, 

 except ksi, psi, and omega.* The oldest Russian 

 writings are those of Yaroslaf and Nestor in the 

 tenth century ; and of Theodosius, Sylvester, the 

 poem of Ighor, and Simeon of Suodal in the 

 eleventh. General information may be obtained, 

 scattered in Malte Brun's Geography, and in 

 Adrian Balbi's introduction to his Atlas Ethno- 

 graphique du Globe, at the end of which is an 

 article on Russian literature ; but if more know- 

 ledge is sought, the Mithridates of Adelung and 



* Both have two characters for beta, namely bouki and 

 viedi; and two for zeta, namely jivete and zemlie. 



