tendency would be to make the mark to set a little more straight up and down. It is quite possible that the form of this character, so usually seen in our copy-books and elsewhere with a stroke upward and then downward, was the primitive way of making it, and that the upward stroke is a survival of the earlier form or of the horizontal line of the typical Chinese figure.

Two and three are so plain that almost anyone accustomed to seeing them written in their cursive form, whether in China or Japan, would be likely to see the similarity. In two the lines are united by being made without lifting the brush, and three in a similar way. And so when writing out your bill the shop-keeper, if a rapid scribe, will make them with such a free and rapid twirl of his brush that they frequently look almost identical with our figures two and three. When I first began to try to read the memoranda that would be brought in by the shop-keepers and others I soon began to notice the striking likeness of some of the twos and threes-which would sometimes occur-to our own.

Four does not appear so evident, but if we recall what has been pointed out about the habit of abbreviating the characters as much as possible when using the cursive style of writing and make our comparisons with this form of the Chinese figure rather than with the typical form there is less difficulty, and the likeness becomes more apparent. The typical form of the Chinese numeral is made with five strokes. These five strokes are, in the cursive form, sometimes reduced to two. Here the strokes 1 and 2 of the first are represented by one of the second form; while stroke 2 of the last form gives us a hint of all the remaining strokes 3, 4 and 5 of the typical form. In this last we have a character approaching in form a very common type of our figure four.

In the figure five the similitude is much more evident; for when written rapidly in the cursive form the Chinese figure looks always something like the so-called Arabic numeral and often very much like it, not to say there is sometimes almost identity of form.

The figure six of the Chinese system at first sight seems to bear no resemblance to the form of the digit as we know it, but not so when we have given it more close attention. Looking at the Chinese figure we see three points, one above a line and two standing below and a little apart from each other. Now let us remove the line and we have simply three dots in their proper triangular position. Now we simply unite these points by a dotted line and we have a perfect form of the figure six. But what about the missing horizontal line? We have it in the stem of the figure six as represented in the line above. Notice again the cursive form of the Chinese figure and bear in mind the principle already pointed out of the upward-slanting stroke and you see how the cross line tends to disappear.

As for seven two possible ways of development may be shown, (1) that out of the typical form of the character: (2) that of the cursive form. If the latter only the mere fragment of the original has survived, while the stem is the accidental line which is made by the brush in its course downward to the beginning of the next character which the writer would make below.

Dr. Walter Hough, of the U. S. National Museum, called my attention to the fact that seven is in some parts of the world frequently written with a short cross-line. If this were shown to be a very old form of the figure then a third possible development is suggested.

Eight again appears to bear no resemblance to the original Chinese numeral, but as with six, so with eight, we need only to study the varying forms of the primitive character. The original form becomes in the cursive writing variously written. The last twirl is simply the natural movement that comes in with our way of writing from left to right.

The typical form of the Chinese figure nine is noted in the table. Like the rest when dashed off by a rapid writer it is made without ever taking up the brush between the strokes

but the two run together as one. If instead of making the curved line to the right, the writing instrument is drawn downward, we get a figure closely resembling our nine.

For the sake of further comparison, another partial table taken from that of the Enc. Brit., Article on Numerals, is given here.

It will be noticed in the above that the Nana Ghat characters for one, two and three are the same as those of the Chinese system and thus point us back to a time when the Chinese numeral characters were used in their original forms. The same is true as regards the next line of Cave Inscription characters with the addition that the two straight marks of the figure two are joined together by a stroke as in the form given in the column of frequent and accidental forms in Table No. 1, while the character for eight in the Cave Inscription forms is like that for eight in the column just referred to, and from which our figure is here derived. Again, the forms for one, two and three in the Eastern Arabic characters are practically the same as those we now use, and at the same time plainly near their Chinese originals; while nine of this system is of the same form as that given in Table No. 1 for its development out of the Chinese character.

Now should the explanation here proposed be found to be according to the facts, the question would be: How did the

west come into possession of these written signs? In Johnson's Encyclopedia is this statement: "Arabian numerals or figures: the characters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, which Europeans received through the Arabs from the Hindus." In agreement with this, we find in the Encyclopedia Britannica these statements: "Thus far, recent inquirers are agreed. The disputed points are: (1) the origin and age of the Indian system; (2) whether or not a less developed system without zero but with the nine other ciphers used on an abacus entered Europe before the rise of Islam and prepared the way for a complete decimal notation." (Enc. Brit., Vol. XVII, p. 626.)

We have here, therefore, in these two sources a plain setting-forth of what is the accepted doctrine, namely, that ciphers with zero are from India by way of Arabia. Now upon this hypothesis, if the argument for the real origin of the digits be sustained upon fuller evidence, then the Indo-Arabian system was developed out of the Chinese system; and is in reality a Sino-Indian system; and so the question of the Encyclopedia Britannica of "The Origin and Age of the Indian System" is answered.

But another way of accounting for the widespread knowledge and use of this most convenient method of writing numbers may not be overlooked, namely, their natural development out of a primitive form which has been kept alive by the Chinese through the stretch of centuries, but which was common to other primitive peoples who occupied a neighboring territory to that of the Chinese before their immigration and settlement in central Asia, and by people who wrote, not with the brush but with a stiff instrument.

In conclusion,

A. THE DIGITS WERE RECEIVED RECEIVED BY US THROUGH THE ARABS FROM THE HINDUS. If this proposition is correct then upon the basis of the argument, the question of the origin of the Indian System is answered by pushing the inquiry a step farther back to China for the originals of our digits.

B. THE DIGITS A DEVELOPMENT FROM ANCIENT PICTURE-WRITING. If our digits are a development out of a primitive mode of writing pictures for the numerals still in use among the Chinese but developed out of these without special reference to the Chinese method by perhaps a number of different peoples (as the Aryans and others) who had some kind of commercial intercourse, and all about the same time, the knowledge of them is not necessarily solely from India or Arabia, but an acquisition made very early by our ancestors and handed down in the same way of other inherited knowledge.

In either case if what is here assumed be also a correct reading of the facts then not the Japanese and Koreans alone have profited by borrowing from this ancient depositum of practical arts and inventive genius- China, but the whole civil

ized world by adopting and developing and turning to the highest practical use the digits, the art of printing and the mariner's compass, than which no other group of the same number has played so important a part in the world's progress from a state of higher barbarism to that of civilization and enlightenment.

ANCIENT GEMS.

BY MARTHA ADELAIDE CURL.

In "Archæology" the term "gem" means an engraved stone of the precious kinds, and "even small engraved portions of hard and primitive rocks which have been set or worn as jewels by the ancients,"

The use and adaptation of gems for purposes of adornment and embellishment dates back to the remotest antiquity. Precious stones of fabulous value scintillated from their settings in the heads of Pagan gods, and their counterparts glittered and sparkled in the breast-plates of Jewish high priests. They are found encrusted in the mosaic and architectural work of excavated ruins of ancient civilization. The "Hundred Gated Thebes" has thrown out from the dust of its mouldering splendor half buried beneath the debris of time and tempest, carved gems intaglios and the royal signet rings of long ago dead sovereigns; and they gems are found frequently in illustration of rhetorical figures with symbolic significance and with connoted points of emulation in the Holy Scriptures. The inspired, graphic description of the New Jerusalem contains eloquent mention of precious stones among other materials the author bringing the description of the construction of that apotheosis of a city within the imaginative conception of the human mind.

While the beauty of gems may be such as to appeal to even the primitive eye and untutored taste, which would seem to indicate that they were designed by the Creator to minister to a natural and worthy love and admiration for the beautiful implanted in humanity, it is nevertheless true that they shine most surely and variously, and meet with more intelligent appreciation amidst civilized environment. For it requires a degree of hard labor on the one hand and of artistic skill on the other to find, possess and perfect these rare bits of apotheosized carbon and crystalized mineral which do not characterize man in the savage or barbaric state. Not until he has come out of the wilderness and risen above the exigencies of necessity material wants-- does his mind and attention turn to the aesthetic values of such things found in Nature, or which contrivance and industry on his part can effect to produce somewhat of art or its beginnings,

The rough pebble or crude gem in its matrix shows in a measure the potentialities of the finished sparkling jewel artistically cut; and some conception of its possibilities may occur

to the imagination of the untutored child of the wilderness or plain, as he comes upon it by accident in his roamings, altho' he has never seen a walled city of the Orient or an unwalled metropolis of the Occident, or known, or dreamed, an atom of urbane refinement or modern progress, or any personal decoration more rational or attractive than the trophies of tribal warfare dangling from neck and girdle or the plumes of an eagle in his crest.

The aborigine knows one, and but one, elevating influence. from the beginning that is Nature's incomparable panorama of sky and landscape and sea. But this affords and presents to him such an infinite variety of phases, such an inexhaustible source of living interest, of food for contemplation, study, wonder and feeling, speculation and imagination, that he finds in it a god to worship-indeed a number of deities, each with his peculiar sphere of power and greatness and grace-endowed with glory and beneficence; andhe finds therein the inspiration and the correspondence to every possible mood. or fancy of his own mercurial mind and superstitious character. Not only that, but the poet in him finds the color and form, the beauty and sublimity, the grace and the grandeur, the subtlety of light and shade and meaning (all of which contrast forcibly, and go to prove the one step from the Divine Maker) all of these he finds and meets face to face, and they constitute all which form the pristine material from which spring Science and Art when acted upon by that philosopher's stone the mind of man.

So the savage lives nearest Nature and Nature's richest stores most priceless products; and being imbued with the spirit that pervades it all, he doubtless has, though he may not be able to segregate it from the multitude of other impressions which crowd his unsystematised, untrained mind the unclassified lore which to a scientist would perchance be material for many books, but which only make the primitive man more wise without rendering him more useful. He has perhaps that innate appreciative understanding of the radiant. gem which is not more opalline or irridescent than the sea and sky where the eternal stars and planets and suns shine and pass in procession and marvelous phenomena.

But it is in the diadems of kings that the gem has found its crown of setting. Among the crown jewels of various monarchs of the earth are found the most valuable gems known. Church and state have appropriated them to a great extent in the Old World, but in republics where there is no hereditary royalty-no supremacy but the intellectual and commercial there are found among the princely fortunes of a few some gems that can compare even with continental traditional wealth in exquisite fineness and estimated value.

There is much mention of gems in Ancient History. And although in celebrated collections of gems forgeries are sometimes found, there are about 10,000 reputed to be antique-a