The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were familiar with manual arithmetic and finger-numeration, as quaint John Bulwer shows by numerous citations in his _Chironomia_ (1644). The earliest finger-alphabets extant appear to have been based upon finger-signs for numbers, as, for instance, that given by the Venerable Bede (672-735) in his _De Loguela per Gestum Digitorum sive Indigitatione_, figured in the Ratisbon edition of 1532.[4] Monks and others who had special reason to prize secret and silent modes of communication, beyond doubt invented and used many forms of finger alphabets as well as systems of manual signs.[5] The oldest plates in the library of the National Deaf Mute College are found in the _Thesaurus Artificiosae Memoriae_ of frater Cosmas P. Rossellius of Florence, printed in 1579, which gives three forms of one-hand alphabets. Bonet's work[6] of 1620 gives one form of the one hand Spanish manual alphabet, which contains forms identical with certain letters in the alphabets of 1579. This was introduced into France by Pereire and taught to the Abbe de l'Epee by Saboureux de Fontenay, the gifted pupil of Pereire. The good Abbe however continued to use a French[7] two-hand alphabet which, he had learned when a child and which he said all school-children knew. He mentions also a Spanish alphabet in part requiring both hands, and remarks that different nations have different manual alphabets. The Abbe Deschamps, a rival of De l'Epee, made use of a finger alphabet in teaching the deaf to speak, which was not adapted to rapid use. John Bulwer, in his _Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of the Hand_, printed in 1644, figures five manual alphabets for secret communication. [Footnote 4: The library of the New York Institution contains a copy of this very rare edition, bearing the title _Abacus atque velustissima Latinorum per digitos manusque numerandi (quinetiam loquendi) consuetudo_, etc., Ratisbonae, 1532.] [Footnote 5: For an exhaustive account of the gesture speech in Anglo-Saxon monasteries and of the Cistercian monks, who were under rigid vows of silence, see F. Kluge: _Zur Geschichte der Zeichensprache.--Angelsachsische indicia Monaslerialia,_ in _International Zeitschrift fur Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft,_ II. Band, I. Halfte. Leipzig, 1885.] [Footnote 6: _Reduccion de lasletras y arte para ensenar a hablar los mudos_, 1620. The writer is under obligations to Sr. Santos M. Robledo, of the Ministry of Public Works and Education, for advance sheets of the reprint in beautiful facsimile of this rare work ordered by the Spanish Government in 1881.]