Notices respecting New Books. 245 



Mony erys afterwards y vnderstonde 

 Glicr jiat \>e craft com ynto ]>ys londe. 

 Thys craft com ynto England, as y ghow say, 

 Yn tyme of good kyng Adelstone's day." 



" This notice," remarks Mr. Halliwell, " of the introduction of 

 Euclid's Elements into England, if correct, invalidates the claim of 

 Adelard of Bath, who has always been considered the first that 

 brought them from abroad into this country, and who flourished full 

 two centuries after the good kyng Adelstone." 



We would also refer to the curious fact that the celebrated trans- 

 lation of Campanus is nothing more than Adelard's with a com- 

 mentary ; and it is curious that this should not have been noticed 

 till very recently, and then by three persons independently of each 

 other ; — Tiraboschi ; the anonymous author of " Geometry," in the 

 Penny Cyclopaedia ; and by the late Mr. Charles Butler of Cheam. 

 For reasons given by Mr. Halliwell, it would almost seem that the 

 commentary as well as the translation attributed to Campanus, is 

 also due to Adelard. 



VIII. An account table for the use of merchants : from a manu- 

 script of the I4th century. 



This table wiU probably be a puzzle to most of our readers ; and 

 it is doubtful whether, from the editor's remark on the subject, he 

 has not himself mistaken its exact character. It is, however, neither 

 more nor less than a picture of a merchant's abacus or counting 

 board. The ciphers in the several squares represent holes bored 

 to receive pegs or pins, which mark the numbers of poundes, schil- 

 lynges, penyes, and ferthynges in any sum of money. There are 

 holes for 1, 2, 3 ferthynges at the upper part of the right side of 

 the board; for 1, 2, .... 11 penyes from right to left along the 

 top ; below and parallel to these for 1, 2, ... 11 shillynges, and ver- 

 tically down the left side for 12 ... . 19 shyllynges ; whilst in the 

 other part of the board is a table for poundes, which proceeds accord- 

 ing to the decimal scale to 10'°, with nine horizontal columns, of 

 holes for inserting pegs to express any one of the nine digits as the 

 coefficient of any one of the powers of 10. This table would there- 

 fore express any number less than 10". The vertical columns are 

 headed in Roman letters as annexed, and below them we put their 

 values in modern notation : 



XMCXMCXMCX 



IQio 10' 10« 107 106 105 10" 103 102 101 



and it is remarkable that 10° or the units' column is left without any 

 heading at all. We may add also tliat the numbers 1, 2,. ... 19 in 

 the fractional part of the table are written in the manuscript in the 

 common figures of the time, whilst the decimal places are expressed 

 by Roman letters. 



This is perhaps one of the most curious MSS. yet discovered for 

 the purposes of arithmetical history, as it shows, what has never been 

 suspected by inquirers into the subject, that the abacus was used in 

 a form very neai'ly resembling the common method of modern calcu- 



