472 
LOTTERIES . 
Lotteries. 
It seems that the 6rst English Lottery was drawn in 1569. It con 
sisted of forty thousand lots, at ten shillings each lot. The prizes 
were plate, and the profits were intended for the repair of the havens 
of the kingdom. It was drawn at the west door of St. Paul’s Cathe- 
dral. — In 1612 King James, for the special encouragement of the 
plantation of English colonies in Virginia, granted a lottery, to be 
held at the west end of the Park ; the prizes seem again to have con- 
sisted of plate. Lotteries were suppressed as nuisances to the pub- 
lic in the reign of Queen Anne ; but they were revived under that of 
her successor George I, 
Coral Fishery. ^ 
The manner of fishing is nearly the same wherever coral is found- 
The method used at the bastion of France, under the direction of the 
company established at Marseilles, is to send out seven or eight men 
in a boat, and when the net is thrown by the caster, the rest work the 
vessel, and help to draw the net in. The net is composed of two 
rafters of wood tied crosswise, with leads fixed to them ; to these 
they fasten a quantity of hemp, tied loosely round, and intermingled 
with some large netting. This instrument is let down where they 
think there is coral, and pulled up again when the coral is strongly 
entangled in the hemp and netting. For this purpose six boats are 
sometimes required, and if, in hauling in, the rope happens to break, 
the fishermen run the hazard of being lost. Before they go to sea, 
they agree for the price of the coral, at so much per pound ; and they 
engage, on pain of corporal punishment, that neither they nor their crew 
shall embezzle any, but deliver the whole to the proprietors. When this 
is accomplished, which amounts, one year with another, to twenty-five 
quintals for each boat, it is divided into thirteen parts ; of which the 
proprietors have four, the casters two, and the other six men one 
each, the thirteenth is claimed by the company to whom the boat 
belongs. 
Ancient Mathematicians. 
The first who cultivated mathematics after the flood were the 
Assyrians and Chaldeans ; from whom Josephus says the science was 
carried by Abraham to the Egyptians ; who proved such notable pro- 
ficients, that Aristotle fixes the first rise of mathematics among them. 
From Egypt they passed into Greece, through the hands of Thales, 
A. A. c. 584 ; who having learned geometry of the Egyptian priests, 
taught it in his own country. After Thales, Pythagoras, among 
other mathematical arts, paid a particular regard to arithmetic, 
fetching the greatest part of his philosophy from numbers : he was 
the first, as Laertius tells us, who abstracted geometry from matter ; 
and to him we owe the doctrine of incommensurable magnitude, and 
the five regular bodies, besides the first principles of music and astro- 
nomy. Pythagoras was seconded by Anaxagoras, CEnopides, Briso, 
