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

TARTME.NT,

Governmt. Seen-
ritiee(including
Dead Weight
Annuity) :...£12,886,314
Other Securities 18,316,348
Notes 13,011,200
Gold and Silver

Coin ... 1,171,900

£45,585,762

There is not now a village school in any part of
the civilised world where arithmetic is not taught
with all its intricacies; and any boy ten years old
who could not master his four rules would ba con-
sidered an irretrievable dance. 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
the 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 1)
" 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." Ile concludes
his work with the following verse in monkish
Latin : _ _ .

- -
" IE4 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."

It is announced that the Atlantic Cable of 1866
has been successfully repaired. The ship Chiltern sailed
from Greenwich on the sth inst., with an experienced staff
from the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Com-
pany, and in 13 days after she left the repair was accom-
plished, the injury proving to be at the precise place in-
dicated by the electricians testing from Valeutia, viz., two
miles and a half from the station at Heart's Content.
THE SITTINGS OF THE CHANCERY COURTS. —The
whole of the Chanuery Courts will rise for the long vaca-
tion on or before the 9th of August next.

SUCCESSION DUTY IN IRELAND.—In the seven
financial years ending March 31, 1867, succession
duty under the act of 1853 was charged in Ireland on
£23,573,798, the amount of property charged averaging
£3,367,685 a year. In the year ending March 31, 1867,
the amount was £3,604611. In that year £25,193 was
charged as duty, at 1 per cent., on succession by lineal
issue or lineal ancestry to property amounting to
£4519,633 ; £27,965 was charged as duty, at 3 per cent.,
on succession brothers or sisters or their de-
scendants to property amounting to L 932,179 ; £2,310,
at 5 per cent., on succession by uncles or aunts, or
their descendants to property amounting to ..£16,015 ;
£1,933 at 6 per cent., on succession by brothers sisters
orth ethperired
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