Writing is slow, inconvenient, and often impossible. Writing upon the palm of the hand was proposed by the Abbe Deschamps in 1778, as utilizing the sense of touch, and was used in darkness by him as a substitute for speech, but it is neither accurate nor rapid. Writing in the air[1] with the finger is also slow and uncertain, while the action is unpleasantly conspicuous. [Footnote 1: The brilliant but wily Sicard, whose "show" pupils were accustomed to honoring drafts at sight in appropriate responses to all sorts of questions, acting upon the motto, _Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur_, schooled certain pupils in deciphering writing in the air, and was thus prepared, in emergencies at his public exhibitions, to convey intimations of the answers, while supposed to be using "signs" in putting questions.] Finger-spelling would appear to be a far more convenient, easy, rapid, and accurate adjunct to speech or substitute for it than writing. It is a common error to consider the ordinary manual alphabets as deaf-mute alphabets and finger-spelling as the sign-language of the deaf. Finger-spelling is to the deaf a borrowed art. It is used by many of the educated deaf and their friends as a substitute for the sign-language, and it enables them also to supply the deficiencies of the sign-language by incorporating words from written language. Scagliotti, of Turin, devised a system of initial signs[2] which begin with letters of the manual alphabet, and Dr. Isaac Lewis Peet, of New York, has made a similar application of manual letters to signs to suggest words of our written language to the initiated deaf. But it should not be forgotten that practice in finger-spelling is practice in our language. [Footnote 2: _Quatrieme Circulaire_, Paris, 1836, p. 16. Carton's _Memoire_, 1845, p. 73.] The origin of finger-spelling is not known. Barrois, a distinguished orientalist, in his _Dactylologie et Langage primitif_[3], ingeniously traces evidences of finger-spelling, from the Assyrian antiquities down to the fifteenth century upon monuments of art. [Footnote 3: Barrois: _Dactylologie et langage primitif_, Paris, 1850, Firmin Didot freres.]