415 
subject of the Contact Theory of Electricity, as connected 
with the views suggested in his paper “ on the Direction and 
mode of Propagation of the Electric Force, in media not un- 
dergoing Electrolyzation.” Mr. Knox referred, at some 
length, to the recent experiments of M. Peclet on this sub- 
ject, published in the Annales de Chimie. 
The Secretary read some memoranda of the native Indian 
account of Tabasheer, communicated by William Farran, 
Esq. 
The Secretary read the continuation ofa paper by James 
Orchard Halliwell, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A., &c. &c., on the 
Boetian numerical Notation. 
I. 
An Inquiry into the Period of the first Use of the Zero 
by those Writers who adopted the Notation of the Boetian nu- 
merical Contractions. 
During the researches made by M. Chasles, of Chartres, 
and myself, on the subject of the Boetian numerical contrac- 
tions,—the former published in the Transactions of the Brus- 
sels Academy, and the Comptes Rendus of the Academy of 
Sciences, the latter in an Appendix to the Rara Mathematica, 
—we came to no definite conclusion on the nature of the 
change from the use of the abacus to that of local position 
and the cipher. Some documents recently discovered by me 
have strikingly elucidated this point of the inquiry, and as they 
develop an entire new view of a system before only conjec- 
tural, I have ventured to place the results before the notice 
of the Royal Irish Academy, the more especially as the 
general objects of that body render the subject more appro- 
priate to their views than those of any society in England. 
Before I enter into this short discussion, to give the 
reader an idea of the state the subject was left in, I will 
quote my latest opinion :— 
