^ Prof. Rigaud on those MSS. in G, Britain^ which contain 
still they shew the man not to have been familiar with Greek. 
Another, who certainly writes a more practised hand, fills his 
parts with contractions : these are not only literal but verbal ; 
we have O for nXiog, A for rgiymovj &c. &c. ; again, is (po% 
is and occurs where we can only determine 
from the context whether it is intended for ot^i&^nriKvig or a^fioviKYi^, 
What the arrangement was which these scribes made among 
themselves, is not easy to conjecture ; but it seems to have been 
such, that they might all, at least in some parts, have been work- 
ing at the same time ; for the pages are hardly any of them full^ 
some having more and some less vacant spaces left at the bot- 
tom of them, and the last lines of the pages are very seldom, if 
ever, complete, although the change to the next page may be in 
the middle of a sentence, or even of a word. All this may have 
been occasioned by the copy’s being made to contain exactly 
what was found on each page of that from which it was taken ; 
and as the diagrams are in general omitted^ this alone, if we 
suppose them to have been annexed to the several propositions 
i in the original, will account for inequalities in the length of the 
pages in the transcript. The plan of several copying different 
parts at the same time^ may account for a very singular confu- 
sion which occurs in the 4th, 5th, and 8th books, in which some 
of the pages are divided into two, while the upper and lower 
halves do not make parts of the same passages, neither does the 
text in the successive pages follow any regular order. 
The volume is put together in a parchment cover, without 
any' boards, and is, upon the whole, in as good condition as 
could be expected ; but the lines generally reach both ways to 
the edges of the paper, so that letters are sometimes lost on one 
side by the pasting of the leaf on the guard, and, on the other, 
by the outer margin’s being worn. There is no memorandum 
of the age of the manuscript, nor of the persons who were em- 
ployed to copy it. In Sir H. Savile’s own catalogue, the Pap- 
pus is mentioned by itself, so that the other books were proba- 
bly bound up with it at a subsequent period. There is the fol- 
lowing memorandum written against the Pappus : m. script. 
Argentorati,” and as Dr Trail speaks of a MS. in the Stras- 
burg Library which is not noticed by Harles, it is possible that 
there may be some connection between the books. In the S4th, 
