Concerning the history of punctuation-marks it is claimed that Jerome, the celebrated scholar of the fourth and fifth centuries (died 420 A. D.) used points similar to our "comma" and "colon." These points, while not in universal use by the writers, were inserted in many old manuscripts. In the ninth century, the stroke called the "comma" came into more common use, and a dot above the line indicated a pause equivalent to the "colon" or the "semicolon," while a full stop was denoted by a large dot or "period" or a double dot, and by a space. The interrogation point, identical in form with our semicolon, occasionally appears. The "breathings" and "accents" with which the Greek literature has come down to us, while traces of them appear in the early centuries, were not common at the end of the seventh century A. D.,--those found in the Vatican manuscript of the fourth century and in the Alexandrian manuscript of the fifth were supplied by a later hand than the writers of these copies. The Latins, in the wake of the Greeks, adopted their system of punctuation, meager as it was, and continued its use in the transcription of the Latin literature throughout the Middle Ages. The system of punctuation employed in all modern literature, and which is so essential a part of the finished rhetoric, is of recent development as compared with the course of literature, and dates from the time of a Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, late in the fifteenth century. It was largely consequent upon the invention of printing, though some of the punctuation-marks of the modern system were used before the division of the sacred literature into chapters and verses. It is to be noted that the present tendency by the best writers is to simplify punctuation as much as possible. The system of notation--as with many of the good things of life and much of our wisdom--like the wise men in the days of Herod, came from the East,--from India by way of Arabia. The origin of the completed system of notation as now in universal use, at once simple and complete, is comparatively recent and obscure. Its origin and development had both a practical and a philosophical side. Its beginnings antedate the earliest art, literature, and science. It began in _counting_ and in some sort of tally of separate units,--perhaps upon the fingers. Probably the ten digits of the two hands suggested the widely-extended and ever-available scale of ten for comparison and estimate. Other scales than ten for counting and calculation have been employed by tribes and nations:--scales of twos, and threes, and fives, and sevens, and twelves, and twenties. The ancient Hebrews employed two or more of these scales.