When you open a page, you find it to consist of a series of horizontal and perpendicular lines, like the pattern of a pair of shepherd’s plaid inexpressibles, variegated with columns of numerals; these figures running on regularly from No. 1, on the top of the first page, to No. 100,000 at the bottom of the last. It must therefore be obvious to the meanest capacity that the mere existence of that book, with its arbitrary date and series of numbers, corresponding to the like series of Notes, is a sufficient record of the existence and issue of the latter. The return of each Note after its public travels, is recorded in the square opposite to its number. Each page of the book contains two hundred squares and numbers; consequently, whatever number a Note may bear, the Clerk who has to register its safe return from a long round of public circulation, knows at once on which page of the book to pounce for its own proper and particular square. In that he inserts the date of its return—not at full length, but in cypher. “S” in red ink means 1850, and the months are indicated by one of the letters of the word AMBIDEXTROUS, with the date in numerals. Our only, and therefore favourite, five is numbered 31177. Should it chance to finish its travels in the Accountant’s Office on the 6th of August next, it will be narrowly inspected (for fear of forgery) and defaced—a Clerk will then turn at once to the book lettered “Fives, Feb. 2,” and so exactly will he know which page to open, and where the square numbered 31177 is situated, that he could point to it blindfold. He will write in it “6 t,” which means 6th August; that being the eighth month in the year, and “t” the eighth letter in the chosen word. The intermediate history of a Bank Note is soon told. Nineteen-twentieths are issued to Bankers or known houses of business. If Glynn’s, or Smith’s, or any other banking firm, require a hundred ten-pound Notes, the Clerk who issues them makes a memorandum showing the number of the Notes so issued, and the name of the party to whom they have been handed—an easy process, because Notes being new,[3] are always given out in regular series, and the first and last Note that makes the sum required need only be recorded. Most Bankers make similar memoranda when notes pass out of their hands; and the public, as each Note circulates among them, frequently sign the name of the last holder. When an unknown person presents a Note for gold at the Bank of England, he is required to write his name and address on it, and if the sum be very large, it is not paid without inquiry. By these expedients, a stolen, lost, or forged note can often be traced from hand to hand up to its advent. Footnote 3: The Bank ceased to re-issue its Notes since 1835. The average periods which each denomination of London Notes remain in circulation has been calculated, and is shown by the following