146 ON ERRATA RECEPTA. 



though we call our numerals Arabic, they agree more closely in form 

 with the Sanskrit than they do with the present Arabic. 



With the revival of the type of the reign of Queen Ann, there has 

 been a return also to the forms of the numerals then in vogue — forms 

 which in some Offices, for some purposes, had never been disused. 



For the sake, apparently, of producing evenness and compactness of 

 line, — a praiseworthy object were we still in the habit of writing only 

 in capitals — great liberties had been taken with the relative magni- 

 tudes of numerals by scriveners and type-founders — until the histor- 

 ical contour thereof had been sadly interfered with. Figures high 

 and low, long and short, have been by those unphilosophic artists con- 

 founded, and made by a kind of Procrustean treatment to touch par- 

 allel limits at top and bottom. But clearly there is as much impro- 

 priety in making written figures all of a height, as there would be in 

 doing so with the written letters. 



The numerals, then, as they have been rendered of late in the Sa- 

 turday Review, and numerous other notable publications, simply reas- 

 sert the forms of which without authority they had been deprived ; 

 and although seniors will, as is their wont, not readily interrupt a cus- 

 tom learnt in childhood, young arithmeticians will prefer to adopt the 

 revived method, and construct figures as well as letters in accordance 

 with their rationale. Thus it will not be long before in schools it will 

 be the practice to make I's, 2's and -i's neither above nor below the 

 general line of a series of words or figures (with the exception of 4 

 which extends a little way below) ; whilst in relation to the general 

 line 6's and 8's will be written with the upper half above it, and 3's, 

 5's, 7's, 9's, with the lower half below it. 



In the Procrustean treatment of figures described above, the sym- 

 bol for " four " lost its essential form. Whilst being unnaturally 

 stretched to reach the altitude of 8, its main stem snapped, and was 

 ever afterwards simply indicated by a mere touch of the pen across 

 what had been the base of a very perfect little triangle. 



Symbols Algebraical and Geometrical are generally modern, and so 

 have not had time to vary much from their first intention. They too 

 are mildly pictorial, taxing the imagination but little. The minus 

 sign is the track left by the part withdrawn ; the plus is the oblitera- 

 tion of this, and so its opposite. In the symbol for division the severed 

 parts have shrunk up into two points. A square is a square, a 

 parabola is a parabola, and so on. But in the rapid execution neces- 



