OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 23 



Professor C. C. Felton, referring to a previous comnmni- 

 cation of his on a fragment from Menander, remarked as 

 follows : — 



" It will be remembered, perhaps, that I made a short communication 

 to the Academy about a year ago, entitled ' Menander in New York.' 

 In that communication an account was given of an ancient Greek 

 writing-tablet in Dr. Abbot's Egyptian Museum, containing a passage 

 of poetry, which, for reasons stated at some length, I supposed to be a 

 hitherto unknown fragment of Menander. It was mentioned, also, that 

 there were other tablets of a similar description, more or less broken, 

 but evidently written over with copies of the passage contained in the 

 first, though apparently by less practised hands. On two of the broken 

 tablets there was substituted for a word in the text another, expressing 

 a ludicrous impatience on the part of the writers, as much as to say, 

 ' Deuce take it.' On re-examining these tablets and fragments of tab- 

 lets, during a recent visit to New York, I noticed two or three interest- 

 ing particulars which had before escaped my attention. On one of the 

 fragments is written the following part of a sentence (adding the accents 

 and breathings), 6 Ttpwros ev noi — ; the rest being obliterated. At the • 

 bottom of another tablet is Avritten part of a word, (piXoirov — ; the re- 

 mamder of this word, also, being obhterated. The first is evidently a 

 portion of a sentence written by the master to encourage the scholars, 

 perhaps by the promise of a reward. The syllable ttoi is evidently part 

 of noiTjaoii' or Tvoirjaas, and the sentence was, ' He who first shall well 

 perform his work — ' The rest must be left to the imagination. The 

 second, ^CKottov — , is part of c^iikoivovos or (^CKoivovas, meaning careful, or 

 carefully or industriously, and seems to be an expression of the mastei''s 

 approbation of the manner in which the boy who owned the tablet had 

 written out his copy. We have, therefore, in these tablets, — first, the 

 copy set by the master ; second, a sentence of encouragement to the 

 boys ; third, the master's approbation of one of them ; and, fourth, a 

 lively expression, (f)6apr](T{Tai, of the impatience of two of the rogues, 

 who had got tired of the irksome task of writing. From these hints 

 we may form a pretty good idea of a Gra^co-Egyptian school in the 

 Ptolemaic times. 



" Since last winter Dr. Abbott has sent from Egypt three wooden 

 tablets of a different character and a later age. They are elliptical in 

 shape, with a kind of triangular handle at each end. The inscriptions 

 are funereal, recording the names, and in two of them the ages, of the 



