686 



SCIENCE. 



[N.S. Vol. XVII. No. 435. 



laws. The sounds weaken by the law of 

 least effort, strengthen under the accent, 

 are assimilated by neighboring sounds 

 while the writing of a word remains un- 

 changed, so that any letter may come to 

 stand for any sound and any sound be 

 found represented by many different let- 

 ters. This is the condition of a language 

 as it grows. Such a language needs to be 

 shaped by reason to the use of man. 



An alphabet addressed to the eye is ma- 

 chinery to suggest the elementary signifi- 

 cant sounds, and is open to improvement 

 like all labor-saving machinery. 



The Roman alphabet was a simple set of 

 largely straight-line forms suited for cut- 

 ting in stone from right to left like our 

 capitals. It has been improved into cursive 

 forms easily connecting from left to right. 

 This change was established in the fifteenth 

 century. 



It brought two forms of I into use, i and 

 j. The penmen often swept the i below 

 the line with a flourish, and the types i and 

 j were used indifferently for either the 

 vowel or consonant force of the Roman I. 

 In the beginning of the seventeenth century 

 they were differentiated and j used only as 

 a consonant. 



The Roman V also had two cursive forms, 

 V and u, used indifferently for vowels and 

 consonants, differentiated at the same time, 

 all under the lead, as our Dr. C. P. G. 

 Scott has lately shown us, of the great 

 scholar Philemon Holland and his printers. 



The philologists have also developed six 

 continuant lingual consonant diagraphs 

 with a diacritic h, viz., dh, tli, sh, zh, dzh 

 = j, tsh^:^cli, to which the attention of 

 workers in alphabetics is invited. There 

 are also a new type z for sonant s and a 

 nasal ng. 



But the vpwels are the most tangled field. 

 Between A and E has been established the 

 sound in 'at,' 'fare'; between A and that 

 in 'not,' 'nor'; between A and V that in 



' fun, ' ' burn. ' Three new types are wanted. 

 It is proposed to obtain them as Holland 

 did. There are two forms (a and a) used 

 for both the sounds in 'father' and fat'; a 

 is to be used always for the first, a for the 

 last. "I can't tell a lie, papa; you know I 

 can't. I did it with my little hatchet." 

 The words are not obscured, the spelling is 

 perfected. 



There are two graphic forms (o and o) 

 used for the sounds of 'no' and 'not'; o 

 must be used only for the first, o only for 

 the second sound. 



So let the lower case u be used only for 

 the vowel in 'full,' 'rule' and the small 

 capital TJ only in 'but,' 'burn,' etc. It will 

 be seen in accompanying diagrams how 

 easily the use of these types may be intro- 

 duced, and how far the general use of them 

 will go in reducing our chaos to cosmos. 



The society is urged to use types in her 

 documents as plainly within her general 

 sphere, 'philosophy for fruit,' as a special 

 field in which her members have always 

 been leaders from Franklin to Haldeman,. 

 and the authors of the last state paper on 

 spelling. This is a time of crisis. The 

 language of the Pacific and the coming 

 world ought not to be left to pidgin Eng- 

 lish. 



Archeology and Mineralogy: Professor 

 Paxil Haupt, LL.D., Johns Hopkins 

 University, Baltimore, Md. 

 In seven passages of the Old Testament 

 we find references to a precious stone of 

 Tarshish, i. e., southern Spain (Exod. 

 xxviii. 20, xxxix. 13; Ezek. i. 16, x. 9, 

 xxviii. 13 ; Song of Solomon, v. 14 ; Dan. 

 X. 6). As a rule, it is stated that the 

 Greek Bible translates 'chrysolite,' and 

 that the chrysolite of the ancients was our 

 topaz; but the passage of Pliny quoted in 

 support of this view clearly points, not to 

 topaz, but to crystals of cinnabar. An- 

 thrax also, which the Greek Bible has for 



