The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-20 00:00:00

Ancient Arithmetic.

There is not now a village school in any part of
the civilised world where arithmetic is not taught
with all its intricacies ; ani any boy ten years old
who could not master his four rules would be con-
sidered an irretrievable dunce It was not so a
dozen centuries ago, when arithmetic was quite as
abstruse a science as the Integral Calculus is now.
And strange to say, at present the cleverest school-
boy could make nothing of the arithmetic of bygone
days, and it requires one of the first mathematicians
of the age, such as M. Chasles undoubtedly is, to un-
ravel the mystery. In a paper communicated
to the Academy of Sciences that gentleman en-
deavours to trace the history of arithmetic
from the time of Boethius to the tenth
century. The " Geometry" of the latter writer is
the only ancient work extant which treats of the
Abacus of the Romans. That system consisted of
nine figures assuming a tenfold value for every place
they occupied from right to left, as in our present
system, only the nought was marked by a blank.
M. Chasles has taken great pains to find out some
later work which might have derived its information
from some earlier source than the work of Boethius,
which neither explains the rule of division nor
fractions, and has at length hit upon a MS. of Abbo,
who in the tenth century was abbot of Fleury, and
taught arithmetic to his monks. This is what
Ithe worthy churchman says in his preface : " As
some time ago I was explaining the Calculus' of
Victorius to my brethren, they begged me to
write a commentary upon it, in which I
might give the necessary explanations so
as to remove all difficulties. . . . From my earliest
youth I have always grieved at seeing the liberal
arts neglected and left to but a few persons who
made people pay dear for their lessons" (how our
village masters' mouths must water on reading this !)
" I will strike the most ignorant minds," continues
the abbot, " and build them a bridge of introduction
to arithmetic Victorius teaches how to make
multiplications and divisions of numbers without
making mistakes, both in questions relating to the
sciences connected with numbers, such as arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy, and in questions
relating to weights and measures." fie concludes
his work with the following verso in monkish
Latin : _ _

" Ilia Abbas Abaci doctor dat se.Abbo quieti."

(Here the Abbot Abbo, teacher of the Abacus,
gives himself up to repose.) But M. Chasles tells
us that the learned abbot talks of all possible things
—philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, philology, dia-
lectics, astronomy, physics, &c., before he gets to
the Abacus, and at lengths explains digital arith-
metic, or the art of expressing numbers by the
fingers, in which he lay down the following rules :
" If you multiply a single figure by tens, each finger
must stand for 10, and each joint for 100. If you
multiply tens by tens, then each finger stands for
100, and each joint for 1,000."

The succession of the late Dr. Jobert de Lamballe
has just been settled. The portion falling to each
of his five heirs is 560,0001 r., or 2,800,000 fr. in all.
A handsome fortune certainly, when the fact is re-
membered that the illustrious surgeon came to Paris
a poor Jill !

ritzt,Elta;NUE, dttAita,b.
North Eastern, York, 11. and Selby purchase, 10
FOREIGN RAIL WAYbe
Antwerp and Rotterdam, 91
Dutch itheuish, 21
Great Luxembourg, 111
South Austrian and Lombardo Venetian, 151

FOREIGN MINED.
Anglo •Brazilian Gold, limited, 1
Choutales Gold and Silver Mining, 4
Uon Pedro, Nor h Roy, 31 pat
Pestarena United Gold,
Scottish Australfau, 1
St. John del ttey. ilm.. 04
Yudanamutana of South Australia, lim., le
BANE.b.

Alliance, lim., l6}
Australasia, 681
Chartered der. of India, London, and China, 331
Consolidated, lira., 5
ImordnroialanOdttcoomuannty, _
,11m.,
L
Ditto, new, 25
London and South-Western, lim.. 181
London and 11 estminster, 107 i 61 _
MISCELLABBOUB.
Anglo-American
Te l gra Telegraph,so4 lBi
I it
Atlantic
Ditto, 8 per cent., 90 11 90
Australian Mort. Land and Finance, lira., 41
Berlin Water Works, lim., 12/
Ceylon Company, 9/
City offices, lim., 9)
Credit tnneter ut taigland„ lim . 31 1
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and :but baped
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tae;
sd,loLeint
taaa i
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tay.rseilles, Urn.. 111
lim. 3 5-16
Italian Irrigation (Canal Cavour„ .1
National Discount Company. 131
I,itto, new, issued ats pm,, 13/
Peninsula and Oriental team, 464
Viceroy of Egypt. Mortgage Loal, 71 1
io6Damnispocounto um.. 6

F orthbeeweneekendingthe
15thT IJuno
CATTLEtthree
fresh P PLAGUE.--For u
outbreaks E—
.
two in the metropolis, and one at Barking, in Essex.
reported—viz.,
Five cases of cattle plague are reported to have occurred
during the week, being an increase of three on last week's
return. Three of the diseased animals were killed, one
died, and the other was remaining ill at the end of the
week. The total number of cattle reported to have been
attacked in Great Britain since the commencement of the
plague is 278,696, and 56,834 healthy cattle have been
slaughtered to prevent the spread of the disease.
THE SITTINGS OF 'FILE CHANCERY COURTS. —The
whole of the Chancery Courts will rise for the long vaca-
tion on or before the 9th of August next.
A DILEMIIA.—Cabby : " Ere's a go, pliceman !
what am Ito do? I vos ordered to take these 'ere gents
as 'a been a dinin' you see, to their 'spectable 'omes, van
vos for 'anover-square, another for the llalbany, and the
tothers elseveres ; veil, they vos all carefully sorted, yen I
started, and now they 've boon an' gone an' mixed the'r-
selves up, an' I don't know vich is vich !"—Punch.
The course of exchange at New York on London lorbilla at
80 days' eight is about 110 per cent. At this rate there is
a ma 1 profit, on the Importation of gold from the United
States,