_subscript_ exclusively, while the few that remain exhibit both indifferently(45). The earliest cursive copy ascertained to exhibit ι _subscript_ is Matthaei’s r (Apoc. 502 [x]), and after that the Cod. Ephesius (Evan. 71), dated A.D. 1160. The _subscript_ ι came much into vogue during the fifteenth century, and thus was adopted in printed books. 13. Breathings (_spiritus_) and accents(46) were not applied systematically to Greek Texts before the seventh century. But a practice prevailed in that and the succeeding century of inserting them in older manuscripts, where they were absent _primâ manu_. That such was done in many instances (e.g. in Codd. Vatican. and Coislin. 202 or H of St. Paul) appears clearly from the fact that the passages which the scribe who retouched the old letters for any cause left unaltered, are destitute of these marks, though they appear in all other places. Cod. א exhibits breathings, apparently by the original scribe, in Tobit vi. 9; Gal. v. 21 only. The case of Cod. Alexandrinus is less easy. Though the rest of the book has neither breathings (except a few here and there) nor accents, the first four lines of _each_ column of the book of Genesis (see facsimile No. 12), which are written in red, are fully furnished with them. These marks Baber, who edited the Old Testament portion of Cod. A, pronounced to be by a second hand (Notae, p. 1); Sir Frederick Madden, a more competent judge, declares them the work of the original scribe (Madden’s Silvestre, Vol. i. p. 194, note), and after repeated examination we know not how to dissent from his view(47). So too in the Sarravian Pentateuch of the fifth century we read ΤΟΝΥΝ [with several symbols written over the Υ] (Lev. xi. 7) by the first hand. The Cureton palimpsest of Homer also has them, though they are occasionally obliterated, and some few are evidently inserted by a corrector; the case is nearly so with the Milan Homer edited by Mai; and the same must be stated of the Vienna Dioscorides (Silvestre, No. 62), whose date is fixed by internal evidence to about A.D. 500. In the papyrus fragment of the Psalms, now in the British Museum, the accents are very accurate, and the work of the original scribe. These facts, and others like these, may make us hesitate to adopt the notion generally received among scholars on the authority of Montfaucon (Palaeogr. Graec. p. 33), that breathings and accents were not introduced _primâ manu_ before the seventh or eighth century; although up to that period, no doubt, they were placed very incorrectly, and often omitted altogether. The breathings are much the more ancient and important of the two. The _spiritus lenis_ indeed may be a mere invention of the Alexandrian grammarians of the second or third century before Christ, but the _spiritus asper_ is in fact the substitute for a real letter (H) which appears on the oldest inscriptions; its original shape being the first