144 ON ERRATA RECEPTA. 



pound weight, would have answered, at least, as well as % to represent 

 "dollar." It is manifest that the most rational abbreviation would 

 have been a simple D. And this we occasionally see at the head of 

 Canadian and United States figures in English papers, in the absence 

 probably of the usual symbol in the printing office. In some United 

 States papers this character is seen cut in the right way. Would it 

 not be found universally so in the Mexican papers ? 



On the erratum receptum in the word dollar itself, I shall remark 

 in the proper place. 



"Were D employed for Dollar, it might receive the usual mark of 

 contraction across its stem, as in £, ft, &c. Had the symbol ^ been 

 an abbreviation of Scudo, it would have borne this mark transversely. 

 But the silver coins, which we have named dollars, were not Scudi — 

 were not associated in any way with Italians or their language, but 

 wholly with the Spaniards and their language, in which they are 

 known only as Pesos. In the symbol $ rightly formed, then, — which 

 in reality is PP ingeniously monographed into one character, denoting 

 the plural of peso, as MSS. denotes the plural of MS. — we have an 

 interesting little historical monument of the early relations of this con- 

 tinent to the native land of its first possessors. 



2. We next proceed to consider the Numei'als from the point of 

 view selected in this paper. • (a) And 1st of the Roman Numerals. 



The Roman Numerals present some examples of our errata recepta. 

 The symbol for ten (X), if not a pictorial representation of the ten 

 fingers outspread, is a conventional mark for ten separate tallies or 

 strokes with a score drawn obliquely across them ; whilst V (five) is 

 the half of X, or else one hand expanded ; or according to some it is 

 an Etruscan five inverted. The symbol for fifty, L, is in reality X, 

 the Etruscan symbol for 50 inverted. D for 50O is really no D, but 

 the half of C I 9 written also as an ellipse with its minor axis drawn, 

 a symbol said to be also Etruscan, and denoting 1000, the initial pro- 

 bably, like M for mille, of the Etruscan word for that sum. On the 

 principle that IV = 5—1, XL = 50—10, &c. 



(5) And next of the Arabic Numerals. 



Could we compare our Arabic numerals with their native prototypes 

 and these again with their originals, we should see that here also we 

 have a group of our errata recepta — of symbols answeriug their pur- 

 pose as letters do, albeit they have departed far from their first con- 

 dition. The first condition of these numerals, however, I think, was 



