the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints the direc-tion also given to Noah, concerning the dimensions of the ark,leaves no room to doubt that he had a knowledge of numbersand measures.

It is asserted by some that arithmetic was invented by thePhoenicians , and carried into Egypt by Abraham, from whencethe science was transmitted to the Greeks by Pythagoras ,who first made use of the letters of the alphabet to representnumbers, and which method was also adopted, both by theHebrews and Romans, though each made use of their ownletters for that purpose.

All the nations of whom we have any knowledge (exceptthe ancient Chinese ) have chosen the same mode of numera-tion, namely, the decuple progression : the different periodsof tens were distinguished, either by accents, which affectedthe numeral letters, as among the Greeks, or by different com-binations of the numeral letters, as among the Romans, whichmethod, when the numbers were considerable, was very com-plicated and inconvenient.

The ingenious system of numeration, which forms the basisof our modem arithmetic, was long familiar to the Arabians,before it penetrated into our quarter of the world : but thehonor of the original invention, according to Alsiphadi, anArabian author, belongs to the Indians. The Arabians, orSaracens , as they were then styled, introduced the art and Indiancharacter into Europe , on their conquest of Spain , and itbecame generally known among the learned, about the com-mencement of the eleventh century.

Ptolemy , in the second century, invented the sexagesimalnumeration and notation, still used in astronomical calcula-tions, and for the subdivisions of the degrees of circles.

The next considerable improvement was that of decimalparts , invented by John Muller, of Koningsberg , commonlycalled Regiomontanus , about the middle of the fifteenth cen-tury ; though the first person who professedly treated on this