598 



CRYPTOGAMIA 



CR YPTOG R APH Y 



crypt, and was generally used for sepulchral pur- 

 poses. The crypt of Canterbury is one of the finest 

 of this kind. The crypt of Glasgow Cathedral is 



Crypt, Canterbury Cathedral 



also a very beautiful example, the vaulting over 

 the shrine of St Mungo being pointed out by Sir 

 Gilbert Scott in his lectures as one of the best 

 specimens of its class. 



CryptOgamia. This term was introduced by 

 Linnaeus as the twenty-fourth and last class of his 

 system of classification, and broadly with its 

 present contents. The name, however (Gr. kryp- 

 tos, ' concealed,' and gamos, ' marriage ' ), in opposi- 

 tion to flowering plants ( Phanerogamia, q.v.), 

 records its donors well-founded expectation that 

 sexual reproduction would one day oe discovered. 

 Jussieu proposed to distinguish them as Acotyle- 

 dones from monocotyledons and dicotyledons ; but 

 the term has necessarily lapsed for many reasons. 

 De Candolle distinguished them into two great 

 groups, Cellulares and Vasculares ; while End- 

 licher's separation of the vegetable kingdom into 

 Thallophytes and Cormophytes still further re- 

 cognised 'their vast morphological range. Armed 

 with the microscope more recent investigators 

 have determined the life-history and mode of 

 reproduction of all the leading types, so not only 

 amply confirming the hypothesis of Linnaeus, or 

 even still further increasing their morphological 

 importance as compared with Phanerogams, but 

 entirely revolutionising our interpretation of the 

 flowering plants themselves, since leading us to 

 view them as more profoundly cryptogamic than 

 the cryptogams. The separate groups of crypto- 

 gamic plants are outlined in the articles ALG^E, 

 SEAWEEDS, BACTERIA, FUNGI, LICHENS, MOSSES, 

 FERNS, RHIZOCARPS, HORSE-TAIL, LYCOPODIUM, 

 SELAGINELLA ; while their relation to higher plants 

 is explained under PHANEROGAMIA, FLOWER, 

 GYMNOSPERMS. 



Cryptography, the art of secret writing, also 

 called Writing in Cipher, Hieroglyphic Writing, 

 Secret Writing, Steganography, Polygraphy, has 

 been in use from an early date in correspondence 

 between diplomatists and others engaged in import- 

 ant affairs requiring secrecy. Every government 

 used to employ its staff of decipherers, who availec 

 themselves of extraordinary means for interpreting 

 despatches which (fairly or unfairly) came into their 

 possession. The cipherers and the decipherers 

 waged a constant struggle to outwit each other 

 the one by constructing new difficulties ; the other 

 by conquering the difficulties as soon as constructed 

 How often we hear of a courier being murderec 

 and his despatches carried off! And without the 



key to decipher letters so written, to what pur- 

 >ose would they be intercepted by such a deed? 

 !n these modern times, however, there has been so 

 *reat an improvement in the morals of governments 

 ihat the custom of killing foreign-office messengers 

 : or the sake of their despatch-bags is entirely 

 obsolete in diplomacy, and statesmen have ceased 

 ;o pillage post-offices or rifle portmanteaus for 

 ryptographic messages. 



Most of the odd knacks, contrivances, decoys, 

 jlinds, now em ployed by cryptographers were to some 

 extent known to and employed by the ancients. 

 Substituting points for vowels ; arranging threads, 

 knots, or ink-spots at determinate distances ; sub- 

 stituting one letter for another; inventing new 

 arbitrary characters for whole words or even 

 sentences now made use of extensively in tele- 

 graph codes ; abbreviating words in their prefixes 

 and affixes ; writing a long sentence of nonsense, 

 with a clue to find the words which gave the proper 

 sense all were brought into requisition, Perhaps 

 the most amusing of all cryptographs was the one 

 mentioned by Herodotus. Histiaeus, a Greek at 

 the Persian court, being desirous of sending a secret 

 message to Aristagoras at Miletus, selected a slave 

 who was afflicted with bad eyes, and shaved his head, 

 pretending that it was necessary for his recovery. 

 In performing this, Histireus imprinted his secret 

 intention in legible characters on the man's head, 

 and kept him in close confinement till his hair grew 

 again, when he sent him to Aristagoras for a perfect 

 cure. Aristagoras repeated the shaving, read the 

 writing underneath, and thus obtained the desired 

 information by means of the unconscious mes- 

 senger. 



One of the simplest methods of cryptography is 

 to use instead of each letter of the alphabet a 

 certain other letter at a regular interval in advance. 

 Such was a mode of secret writing adopted by 

 Julius Caesar. As a variety of this plan, the alpha- 

 bet is used invertedly, z for a, y for b, y for c, 

 and so on ; or, while the first seven letters are 

 represented by the second seven, the next six may 

 be represented by the last six. And many other 

 variations may be adopted. But the decipherment 

 of such messages is naturally not difficult, and with 

 a little consideration of the peculiarities of the 

 English language, all the ups and downs of many 

 an interesting love story related in cipher in the 

 columns of the Times can be followed from start to 

 finish with comparative ease. It is known that e is 

 the most frequent letter ; that the is the commonest 

 word ; that ea and ou are the double vowels which 

 most frequently occur ; that the consonants most 

 common at the ends of words are r, s, and t, &c. 

 We also know that a word of a single letter must 

 be either the pronoun I, or the vowels or O ; that 

 an, at, on, to, of, and in are the most common Avords 

 of two letters ; that the and and are the most fre- 

 quent words in three letters ; that the most usual 

 doubled letters are ee, oo, II, ss, ff ; that double 

 vowels are mostly followed by I, m, n, r ; that the 

 letter a begins three two-letter words in very ex- 

 tensive use an, as, at ; that the letter o begins or 

 ends eight two-letter words in very common use 

 do, go, no, so, to, of, on, or ; that more words in a 

 sentence of average English begin with t than with 

 any other letter; that in about three-fourths of 

 all the words in a sentence, either the first or the 

 second letter is a vowel ; that among consonants, 

 d and h are most largely used, after which come 

 n, s, r, t ; that the letter q is always followed by 

 u; that no English word of two letters or more 

 ends with *'. All these considerations will guide us 

 to the solution of any simple cipher, enabling a 

 skilful decipherer to read almost any ordinary 

 piece of cryptographic writing in a very short 

 time. 



