ing of several unknown quantities, with applications of algebra to geometrical and indeterminate questions. Ibid. (ccc) The art was first imported into Italy from the east by Leonard Bonacci of Pisa, who composed his arithmetic in the year 1202, and published it a second time in the year 1228, subjoining the algebra as a part of the treatise. Ibid. (ddd) Baha-ul-din, the author of the Khalasat-ul-Hisah, who was born at Balbec in the year 1575, distinctly ascribes to the Indian sages the invention of the nine figures employed to express the numbers from unity to nine. The Arabian and Persian treatises also on algebra, like the earlier treatises of the Europeans on the same art, begin with arithmetic, which is called in them the arithmetic of the Indians. The origin of algebra is not indeed noticed in them, but this, being numerical, was probably considered by the authors as a part of arithmetic. Ibid. Mr. Hutton, to exhibit the gradual formation of the numerical characters, has given a table containing four series, one from the Sanscrit, two of the Arabic or Persian, and one European. Mr. O'Conor has inclined to think them of European origin, and has actu ally shown that the precise characters, which express the numbers seven and nine, had been invented by Tyro, the freedman of Cicero, and were used among the Irish; but as he has admitted that they were not employed to represent numbers, being merely abbreviated expressions of the syllables et and us, we may suppose that they have only assisted in the modification of the characters originally received from India. He has also remarked, that the character expressing five was used in the Polyptychus Remigianus, written in the sixth century; that Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century said that it was numerical, expressing six ounces; and that all the nine characters, except those expressing four and six, are extant in a manuscript of the eleventh century, containing the works of Guido of Aretium. By these considerations Mr. O'Conor is much disposed to believe, that Gerbert, or Sylvester II. who is known to have written about numbers, applied to numeration characters already used in Europe for other purposes. Proleg. part. 2. p. clxxvii-clxxx. Possibly the characters expressing five, seven, and nine, may have been adopted into a system of Indian origin. It should be considered that the question of the origin of the nine numeral characters is quite distinct from that of the origin of the decimal numeration; and that Malmsbury says, that Gerbert first took from the Arabians his abacus, or table of numeration, and gave rules, quæ, a sudantibus abacistis vix intelliguntur. (eee) The words alcohol, alkahest, aludel, alembic, and alkali, are manifestly the terms of an Arabian science. (fff) The alchemists pretended to resolve gold into its principles, and thus to extract a sulphur, which, being mixed with some other metal, as mercury or silver, should change it into gold. Encycl. art. Pierre Philosophale. The first who speaks of making gold is Zosimus, who lived towards the commencement of the fifth century. The universal remedy was not mentioned before Geber the Arabian, who lived in the seventh. Art. Alchimie. The treatises on this subject may be all reduced to this instructive formulary of Avicenna; "he who takes what he ought, and works as he ought, succeeds as he ought:" and to this encouraging precept, "labour and pray." Art. Hermetique. In the year 1452 the term transubstantiating was employed by Henry VI. of England in a patent granted for the practice of this art. Anderson's Hist. of Commerce. (ggg) In his epistle de secretis artis et naturæ operibus atque nullitate magiæ, to many curious mechanical contrivances he subjoins some of a chemical nature, among which is the composition of gunpowder. He appears however to have contemplated only the explosion of gunpowder, without proposing to render it instrumental to the projection of heavy bodies. Bruckerus, per. 2. p. 2. lib. 2. c. 3. sect. 2. § 23. VOL. III. (hhh) The origin of this society is ascribed to a certain German, named Rosencreuz, who travelled through Asia and Africa in the fourteenth century: it was however really formed early in the seventeenth, in ridicule of the public credulity, which it appears to have deceived. Ibid. per. 3. part. 1. lib. 3. cap. 3. § 33, 34. When the mythology of this sect had been exploded by philosophy, it was adopted by Pope as the machinery of his elegant little poem, the Rape of the Lock. C |