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by Greek mercenaries in the service of Psammetichus, B.C. 617. 
He then showed how our modern written and printed alpha- 
bets had arisen out of the Roman letters, and, after a brief 
account of the Sanskrit and the Runic alphabets, and of the 
routes by which they might respectively have reached India 
and Scandinavia, he stated that all the alphabets of the world 
might thus be traced, by means of the Moabite stone, to their 
ultimate source in the Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
He spoke in the next place of the powerful influence which 
had been exerted on the spread of alphabets by the three great 
missionary religions, — Buddhism, Christianity, and Moham- 
medanism ; showing how Buddhism had spread the Asoka 
alphabet over India, Ceylon, Tibet, and Java; and how the 
Nestorian schism had carried one form of the Syriac alphabet 
over the plains of Central Asia to the wall of China, while the 
rise of Islam had caused another local Syriac alphabet, that of 
Cufa, to be the parent of the Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and 
Hindustani forms of writing. 
He went on to explain the causes of alphabetic change : — 
1. Those due to the nature of writing materials, — clay, stone, 
papyrus, parchment, palm-leaves. 
2. Indolence in the writer. 
3. Need of legibility. 
He showed in detail how certain letters had been modified 
in form by the influence of these causes, and gave some curious 
illustrations from the forms of the modern Arabic letters. He 
then pointed out the reasons which had caused the order of 
the letters to be changed in different alphabets, and concluded 
by stating that in the so-called Arabic numerals, 1, 2, 3, 4, 
&c., we have still in daily use, in a most archaic form, the first 
ten letters of the primitive Semitic alphabet. In illustration 
of this statement he showed in detail how the figures 2, 5, 
7, and 8 are nothing but modifications of the letters B, E, Z, 
and H. 
The Chairman. — I am sure all will unite in thanking Mr. Isaac Taylor 
for his address ; he has been compelled to compress into an hour and a half 
matter which would afford ample material for a book. I do not think I shall 
be singular if I say that I have listened with much admiration to the way 
in which Mr. Taylor has given us in that short space of time what might 
fill a volume of considerable size. 
A Member. — We know that many of our missionaries have introduced 
alphabets to different nations, and I believe that a missionary in North 
America has introduced a syllabic system of great simplicity, for the purpose 
of teaching reading and writing to new tribes to whom the Gospel is to be 
preached. 
Y 2 
