on a ~Barn in Kent, &c.

capital letters that would have been requifite for the purpofe ; and it is befides frequently fignified that the letters were written haftily. The year of the king's reign, however, is often fpecified, as alfo the day of the month, or of the faint neareft to it, but always in Latin numerals. Obferving in Plate VI. N 31, annexed to thefe letters, a fpeci- rnen of the Arabic figures which the editor faid were then in ufe, I expecled to have feen many of them ; but unlefs I have over- looked them, they are only to be met with in p.p. 153, 184, of Vol. the Ift, which have been juft examined, and in Vol. the Ilnd, p. p. 300, 302, on the margin of a paper with this title " The Inventory off Englyfhe Boks of John made y e v daye of Novemb' AR. R. E. iiij." And yet there are not fewer than one hundred and fifty-five of thefe letters and papers, and all of them written in the years 1440 1486" ; that is, two hundred years fub- fequent to the time when Dr. Wallis imagined them to have been in common ufe. " Thefe figures," writes the Doctor [/], " feem to have come in ufe in thefe parts about the eleventh century (or rather in the tenth century, about the middle of it, if not fooner), though fome rather think not till the middle of the thirteenth, and it feems they did fcarce come to be of common ufe till about this time." Such, Sir, are the grounds on which I have thought myfelf warranted to controvert a notion that has long prevailed of a too early frequent ufe of the vulgar arithmetical figures ; nor is it im- probable that it might be the more readily acquiefced in from its having been zealoufly maintained by two very eminent profeflbrs. They, however, did not coincide in their opinions refpefting the introduction and confined ufe of Arabic numerals ; for Dr. Ward [;] Treatife of Algebra, Preface, page 2. S 2 thought