(4) The history of _Arabic_, which is more nearly allied to Syriac than to any other member of the Aramean group, exhibits the aggressive spirit of the Prophet, whose scriptures are transcribed in its beautiful flowing characters. It has exterminated its fellow-Semitic scripts, "expelled the Greek alphabet from Asia Minor, Thrace, Syria, and Egypt, and the Latin alphabet from Northern Africa, and is now used over regions inhabited by more than one hundred millions of the human race." The transactions of the East are recorded in the alphabet of the Koran, so that it would seem, in the world's history, that if "trade follows the flag," the alphabet follows religion. The so-called "Arabic" numerals are probably of Indian origin, having been brought by Arab traders from the East and introduced by them into Spain in the Middle Ages, whence they spread over Europe, coming into use in England perhaps about the eleventh century. But whether India invented them, or borrowed them from Greek or other traders from the West, is unknown. Counting with the fingers, the most primitive mode of reckoning, and recording by strokes, a method still in vogue, have their limits, and hence (to say nothing of the use of pebbles and beans, and of the abacus) the invention of written signs for the higher numbers; or the adoption of the letters of the alphabet in their order as number-signs, the numerical value increasing with each successive letter; or the use of the initial letter of the word itself for the number. Examples of special symbols for tens, hundreds, and so forth are supplied by Egyptian and Assyrian records, as shown in the following figures:-- [Illustration: EGYPTIAN NUMERATION] [Illustration: ASSYRIAN NUMERATION] We have examples of the use of letters in their "abecedarian" or acrostic order in the sections of the one hundred and nineteenth and one hundred and forty-fifth Psalms, which bear the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and in the books of the _Iliad_, which bear the letters of the Greek alphabet. That alphabet also supplies illustration of the acrologic method, as _e.g._ Π = Πέντε, for 5; Δ = Δέκα, for 10; H (the old sign for the rough breathing in Ἑκατον), for 100; X = Ξίλιοι, for 1000; Π with Λ (= 5 x 10) inscribed in it standing for 50. A more ingenious method was adopted by both Greeks and Hebrews in the division of the alphabet into three groups: the first to represent units; the second, tens; and the third, hundreds. The use of "Arabic" numerals, besides encountering opposition at the start, was limited until the fifteenth century to the paging of books and mathematical formulæ, but their convenience as compared with the cumbrous Roman figures won them general adoption. Their stages of modification were pictorially suggested by Canon Taylor in a communication to the _Academy_ 28th January 1882, from which the table on p. 212 is borrowed, but the question of origin remains unsettled.