Taylor.] 358 |-Oct. 21, 



traveled in Barbary, he there learned the method of Hincloo arithmetic, and, 

 struck with its superiority over that to which he had been accustomed, he 

 determined that his countrymen should no longer be deprived of the benefits 

 of it. He accordingly published his treatise in the Latin language ; in which 

 he professes to deliver a complete doctrine of the numbers of the Indians. 

 « » ■;■:- ^ considerable period, however, was necessary to introduce this 

 system into the common business of life. The extensive commerce main- 

 tained by the Italian States directed their attention to the subject at au 

 earlier period than other nations ; and although, for scientific purposes, the 

 date of the introduction of the Arabic numeration into Spain is earliei- than 

 that of its appearance in Italy, yet its use for the common business of life 

 prevailed at a much earlier period among the Italian States than in any other 

 nation of Europe" {Lardner's Treatise on Arithinetic, Book i, cli. ii). 



The Hindoo numerals are found in various manuscripts of Italy bearing 

 the dates 1212, 1220, 1228. But none are found in England till nearly two 

 centuries later. Chaucer, the 'poet, who died in 1400, alludes to them in one 

 of his poems as " the figures neice." 



According to Sir John Bowring (" Decimal System," pages 23-30), the first 

 calendar in the English language in which the Hindoo numerals are era- 

 ployed, bears the date of ='1431," and the earliest date known on a tombstone 

 in these figures is "14.54," the tombstone being that of "Elen Cook," in the 

 church at Ware. The first English book which bears its date in these figures 

 is the " Bhetorica Nova, Gulielmi de Saona, 14V8." And in seals only one 

 example has been found anterior to the sixteenth century, which bears the 

 date 1484. "The Roman figures lingered longer in England," adds Bow- 

 ring, "than in any other part of the European world, having found an asy- 

 lum in the dark and dull regions of the Exchequer" (page 26). "It is in- 

 deed scarcely credible that the perplexing and entangled manner of keeping 

 accounts by the Roman numerals, in the same barbarous style which was 

 practised before the Norman Conquest, was maintained at the Exchequer 

 almost down to the present day. * * » In addition to this strange and 

 absurd system of Exchequer book-keeping, tallies continued to be used down 

 to the year 1782. It was only in the year 1831 that the Committee on Public 

 Accounts, of which I was the secretary, recommended the utter and com- 

 plete abolition of the ancient system and the adoption of the Indian numer- 

 als. It Avas in consequence of this change that in the year 1835 the tallies 

 were ordered to be burnt ; a conflagration which led to the destruction of 

 both Houses of Parliament — the Exchequer in which the tallies were kept 

 having formed a part of the ancient edifice of St. Stephen's" {Sir John 

 Boicring's Decirnnl System, pages 124-125). 



Delambre regards it as a fact humiliating to the pride of himian genius 

 that the discovery of the true notation of numbers by nine digits and zero 

 shoidd have escaped the sagacity of the illustrious geometei s and mathema- 

 ticians of ancient Greece. "The Hindoos," says Peacock, "consider this 

 method of numeration as of divine origin. The invention of nine figures 

 with the device of place being ascribed to the beneficent Creator of the uni- 

 verse. Of its great antiquity amongst them there can be no doubt, it having 

 been used at a period certainly anterior to all existing records" {Encyclope- 

 dia Mctropolitana). It can be traced back with certainty at least four 

 centuries before its appearance among the Arabs, and as Lardner well re- 



