Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/213

 ii s. v. MAR. a, i9i2.i NOTES AND QUERIES.

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name of " Peter Corcoran." and was known ii- " the Poet Laureate of the Ring " ; but his real name I have forgotten. In an ancient volume of Blcickwood I fancy the date was 1817 I have read a rather appre- ciative memoir of " Peter Corcoran," with specimens of his muse, some of which seemed to show that he was worthy of a better .subject. Reynolds was probably merely some comic singer of that period (1820). S. P.

Frederick Mansel Reynolds, according to ' The Hon. Grantley Berkeley's Life and Recollections/ was the first editor of ' The Keeps ike,' and author of ' Miserrimus ' and ' The Parricide/ evidently written, says Grantley Berkeley, with " a mind diseased"." He was succeeded in the editorship of that once fashionable annual in 1835 by Lady Blessington. As many of Reynolds's effu- sions, principally in verse, appear in his 'Keepsake.' it is possible that this song of 1 820 may be found in that year's annual. HAROLD MALET, Col.

ARITHMETIC AMONG THE ROMANS (11 S. v. 108). The abacus used by the Romans was merely a contrivance for keeping numbers of different powers or denomina- tions separate. We have a modern adapta- tion of the principle in the columns used for pounds, shillings, and pence. The abacus often took the form of a table, the top of which was divided into compartments or columns, each column representing a differ- ent value, and each adjacent column repre- senting a multiple of the one on its left, and a measure of the one on its right. Pebbles, bits of bone, coins, or any small articles could be used for counters.

The toy " bead rails," used to teach young children to count, can be adopted as another form of an abacus.

Adelard or ^Ethelard of Bath, a twelfth- century English scholastic philosopher, wrote a treatise on the abacus, three copies of which are still preserved at the Bibliotheque Rationale, the Vatican Library, and Leyden University Library.

There is a short description of the abacus in Smith's ' Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,' and another in the latest edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica.' THOMAS WM. HUCK.

An abacus denoted generally and primarily a square tablet of any material ; and further a wooden tray, i.e., a square board sur- rounded by a raised border. Covered with

sand, such a tray was used by mathe- maticians for drawing diagrams. Perpen- dicular lines or channels could be drawn in the sand for the purpose of arithmetical computation. Next the tray, it appears, was made with perpendicular wooden divi- sions, the space on the right hand being, intended for units, the next on the left for tens, the next for hundreds, and so on. Thus, using stones to reckon with, one might put into the right-hand partition stone after stone, until they amounted to ten, when it would be necessary to take them all out, and, instead, put one stone into the next partition. The stones in this division might in like manner amount to ten, thus representing 10X10=100, when it would be necessary to take them out, and, instead, put one stone into the third partition, and so on.

The new ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' gives " a drawing of a Roman abacus taken from an ancient monument. The bar marked I indicates units, X tens, and so on up to millions. The beads on the shorter bars denote fives five units, five tens, &c. The rod and the corresponding short rod are for marking ounces ; and the short quarter-rods for fractions of an ounce.

The swan-pan of the Chinese closely re- sembles the Roman abacus in its con- struction and use. It consists of several series of counters on brass wires, divided in the middle by a cross-piece. In the upper compartment every wire has two beads, each counting five ; in the lower each has five counters of different values, the first 3, the second 10, and so on. All Chinese systems being decimal every weight and measure the tenth part of the next greater the instrument is used with wonderful rapidity in the daily work of trade.

The abacus forms part of all modern kindergarten equipment in the United States. TOM JONES.

A description and drawing of the Roman abacus, with an explanation of how the apparatus was used for various calculations, will be found in Cajori's ' History of Ele- mentary Mathematics,' pp. 37-41.

DAVID SALMON.

Swansea.

THOMAS GOWER TEMP. HENRY V. (11 S. iv. 528). I have ascertained that the arms on the first and fourth divisions of the shield of Thomas Gower referred to in my query are the same as those now used by the Gore family, branches of which are repre- sented by the Earl of Annan, Earl Temple,