Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/180

134 By the several persons who engaged in the controversy it was agreed that the Arabic figures were first used in this country in agronomical tables and other mathematical writings; and, says Dr. Wallis, it was by little and little they came into common use, and common practice ; but, as already observed, he fixes this common use to the thirteenth century, though it is undeniable there is a want of evidence to ascertain this practice either in the two first rules of arithmetic, or in specifying dates and other particulars that required numeration. Had a country mechanic in the tenth century been in the habit of noting the year of building a tower or a gate, it is scarcely credible that these figures so applied should not have been found in some part of every manuscript that recorded the foundation and endowment of a monastery. And if, as the lines cited from Chaucer's Dreme may import, these figures then newe, were used in addition and substraction towards the end of