The root-words in Hebrew and in Arabic are precisely the same (_ts-ph-r_), though in the two {368} languages, and at different ages of the same language, they might have been vowelised differently. In some shape or other, this name is used in all countries that have derived their arithmetic from mediaeval Italy, or from the Saracens. It is with some _cipher_, with others _chiffre_, and with all _zero_. The word is certainly no more Italian than it is French or English. Be it remembered, too, that _ezor_ (quoted at p. 268.), as a _girdle_, is radically the same word, somewhat mutilated. The cardinal meaning of the word (denuded of the conventional accretions of signification, which peculiar applications of it adds to the cardinal meaning) appears to be _emptiness_, _hollowness_, _nothingness_. It may be further remarked, that in the fine Chartres MS. of Boetius, described by Chasles, the 0 is called _sipos_:--the same name, he remarks, that Graves found in use in the East. The modern Turks call the 0, _tsifra_. It is curious enough that in all languages, the term _ciphering_ is popularly used to denote all arithmetical operations whatever. Our schoolboys do their "ciphering," and write carefully in their "ciphering-books." This all seems to point to the art of dispensing with the use of the abacus or counting table. T.S.D. Shooter's Hill, March 5. [1] The best account, because the most consistent and intelligible, of the Greek arithmetic, is that by Delambre, affixed to Peyraud's edition of Archimedes. [2] At a period of leisure I may be tempted to send you a few extracts, somewhat curious, from some of the papers of Mr. Strachey in my possession.