and to this measure is attributed the total destruction of both Houses of the British Parliament, in the month of October, in the year 1834.

Among the contrivances of modern times, that which most resembles the Abacus is the Chinese Swan-pan. Like the Abacus it is a small board, surrounded by a ledge, and divided unequally into two compartments by a slip of wood. Across its narrowest diameter, ten slender slips of bamboo are placed, on which are strung a number of bone balls; two on each piece of bamboo in the upper compartment, and five in the lower. Its use is much the same as

In former times, the English Court of Exchequer had a contrivance, which in its arrangement much resembled the Abacus; it was called a Saccarium, and was in the form of a table, about ten feet long and five feet wide, surrounded by a ledge, about four inches high. It was covered every year after Easter with fresh black cloth, and was divided into compartments, about twelve inches square, by white lines, so as to have a chequered appearance, and from this circumstance arose the name of the Court of Exchequer. The table in the Court of Exchequer is to the present day covered with a chequered cloth. Round this table the judges and other officers were seated, the teller in the centre of one of its sides. Small coins appear to have been used instead of counters, which acquired different values according to the row of squares in which they were placed. On the lowest, each coin represented a penny; on the second, a shilling; on the third, a pound, and every succeeding place, (counting upwards,) imparted a value ten times higher than that below. This mode of calculating has been abolished in the Exchequer long since, but it is only of late years, that the mode of registering by tallies has been abolished in this court. These clumsy contrivances consisted of sticks of hazel or willow, squared at each end. The sum of money was marked on the side with notches by the cutter of tallies, and inscribed on both sides by the writer of tallies; the value of the notches was in proportion to their size, it was then cleft through the middle with a knife and mallet.

On the payment of a debt due to the king in the Exchequer Court, the tally which recorded this debt was delivered to the party paying it, and was then carried to another office, where a receipt on parchment was substituted for it. When, a few years ago, this antiquated practice was abolished, there remained in the offices of the Exchequer, a vast accumulation of these rude instruments of Arithmetic, which it was desirable to have destroyed. They were removed to some apartments in the House of Lords, and fires were made for the purpose of burning them; these fires are supposed to have extended to the building,

that of the Abacus, but it is more comprehensive in its powers. It is in common use in China, and the Chinese are so dexterous in its management, that they can cast up long accounts by means of their Swan-pan as rapidly, and with as much accuracy as most of our merchants' clerks by their more improved system of arithmetic.

The next figure illustrates the palpable arithmetic, or arithmetic of the touch, which is extensively used by the natives of the East Indies and China, in their commercial transactions, not only among themselves, but also in their dealings with British and other merchants. Extensive bargains are struck without a single word passing between the parties, who, seated

upon the ground, with their hands covered by a shawl, or by their robes, agree upon prices which are indicated by pressing the joints of their fingers.

Each joint of every finger has a separate value attached to it. The third joint of the little finger, being pressed outside, means 1; the second joint 2, the first joint 3; the first joint pressed in the front 4, the second 5, the third 6: the third joint pressed on the inside, 7, the second 8, the first 9. On the next finger, beginning at the outside of the third joint, we have 10, the second joint 20, and so on up one side of the finger, down the centre, and up the other side. 30, 40, &c. to 90; the joints of the middle finger pressed in the same order, mean 100, 200, &c.; the index finger 1000, 2000, &c.; and the thumb 10,000, 20,000, on to 90,000.

The above figure of a hand is copied from a Chinese work on Arithmetic, and is the more curious, as showing, in the rude art of that singular people, their love of unnaturally-long nails on the fingers, among them a sign of honourable distinction.

THE GREEK ISLANDS. No. III.

Cos, OR STANCO.

THE island of Cos is one of the most interesting and valuable in the Grecian Archipelago. Like Patmos, it is classed among the Sporades; and its northernmost point is scarcely four miles from the coast of Asia Minor. It lies at the mouth of the great inlet in that continent, which in ancient times was called the Ceramic Gulf, and which now bears the appellation of the Gulf of Boudroon. Its length is about five-and-twenty miles, and its breadth about five. The modern town of Cos is described as presenting an exceedingly miserable appearance; at no time within the last fifty years has its condition been tolerable; and since the period of the Greek revolution, it has exhibited a worse picture still. In the year 1815, there were about 2000 houses in the island, but of these the greater part were in ruins, and some so tottering that it was impossible to walk near them without dread. The violent rains which occurred three years before had contributed very largely to bring about this destruction. There was an earthquake at the same time, though of too slight a nature to cause much mischief. On other occasions it would seem that the town has suffered severely from earthquakes; at the close of the fifteenth century there occurred one which effected considerable damage. Yet it is not to the injuries of nature so much as to the government of the Turks, that we are to ascribe the wretched state of the modern city.

The poorness of the habitations in this fine fertile island contrasts strikingly with the solidity which we noticed in a former number as characterizing the buildings of Patmos. As for the streets of the town, they have scarcely anything to distinguish them from those of most Turkish towns; they are narrow, illpaved, and dirty, and the wretchedness of their appearance is not at all diminished by the almost total absence of glass from the windows of the houses.

Perhaps the most remarkable object in the city, and indeed in the island, is the market-place, and its celebrated plane-tree, represented in our engraving. This tree is supposed to be the largest of its kind in the world. Mr. Turner, who saw it in 1815, found its trunk, to be 33 feet 4 inches in circumference, and its branches to extend from the extremity of one side to that of the other, 37 paces.

According to Dr. Clarke, this great tree once covered with its branches upwards of forty shops; but an enormous branch, extending from the trunk almost to the sea, although propped by ancient columns of granite, gave way and fell. This loss considerably diminished the effect produced by the beauty and prodigious size of the tree; but its branches still exhibited a very remarkable appearance,-extending horizontally to a surprising distance, and supported at the same time by granite and marble pillars found upon the island. "Some notion," he says, "may be formed of the time those props have been so employed, by the appearance of the bark; for this has actually incased the extremities of the columns, and so completely, that the branches and the pillars mutually support each other; it is probable if those branches were raised, some of them would lift the pillars from the earth."

One of the best ornaments of the town is the ancient castle, which stands at its western extremity; it is a fine large building, though as a fortress, of little importance, having but few guns, and those without carriages, and in bad order. "The arms of the Christians," says Van Egmont, "favour the conjecture that it was built by the Genoese; and some

cannon are still mounted on the ramparts; but we were not permitted to enter it. The castle has a moat, or rather a dry ditch, running round it on the east and south,-that is to say,-on the land-side; on the north, it looks towards the open sea, and on the west it has the ancient port, or, to speak more correctly, the remains of it.

The form of this port is that of a circle, whose diameter is about the eighth of a mile. It is now, as for many years it has been, so completely choked up, that even the small Greek boats cannot enter it; the entrance, indeed, which scarcely exceeds fifteen feet in breadth, is closed by reeds, for the convenience of fishing. It is a common tradition in the island, that the Venetians, before surrendering the city into the hands of the Turks, threw their riches into the harbour; and in the year 1801, a Swedish engineer came with forty men, and offered to clear it at his own expense, on the simple condition of being allowed to keep what he found in it. The Turks rejected his proposition, for they, too, share the common belief that there is a vast treasure at the bottom of the harbour; and among the other marvellous items which their luxuriant fancy has depicted, four large cannons, all of solid gold, are conspicuously noted. Yet not even the prospect of getting these can induce them to undertake a work of solid and certain utility,—though the dread of seeing so rich a prize in any hands but their own, is quite strong enough to hinder them from letting others attempt it. To compensate, however, in some degree, for the destruction of the ancient harbour, the Turks have enclosed a space about 300 feet in breadth and 50 in length, by means of a sort of mole, formed of "scanty heaps of small stones;" into this, boats venture when the wind is not blowing from the north.

The island of Cos is greatly distinguished in ancient history as the birth-place of two of the most celebrated men that the world can boast of,-men to whom the judgment of antiquity has awarded the highest rank in their respective professions, and whose names have almost passed into proverbial expressions for excellence in the pursuits which they cultivated. The one is Hippocrates, the father of medicine, the prince of physicians, and the founder of the art of healing, as he has been gratefully called; the other is Apelles, the prince of painters. The former flourished towards the close of the fifth century before the Christian era; the latter lived afterwards, in the time of Alexander the Great.

In the estimation of the ancients, this island was sacred to the god of physic, Asclepios, as the Greeks called him, or Esculapius, to use the more common name by which he was known among the Romans. In the suburbs of the city of Cos there was a temple dedicated to this heathen divinity; this is the Asclepieium, whose relics are so anxiously but so vainly sought after by modern travellers and antiquaries. In the language of the Greeks, it bore the appellation of Asclepieion; and Strabo speaks of it as "exceedingly celebrated," and abounding in precious offerings. In the days of its prosperity, it boasted the possession of two paintings, which were among the choicest productions of the pencil of Apelles; the one was his 'Antigonus," and the other, his "Venus Anadyomene," or Venus rising from the Sea.

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This temple of Esculapius was also remarkable for the number and value of the votive offerings which it contained; perhaps, indeed, the two pictures of which we have spoken may be classed among them. It was a part of the religious system of the Greeks and Romans to present gifts of various kinds to the different heathen divinities, whose aid or protection they

might wish to secure; it was also their custom to make offerings of thanksgiving, as it were, on such occasions as a restoration to health after illness or bodily affliction, or an extraordinary escape from some threatened disaster. These offerings were, of course, of an appropriate character; and were generally accompanied by an inscription referring to the particular circumstances of the case. Thus, mariners who had been saved from shipwreck used to hang up their clothes in the temple of Neptune, with a picture representing the details of their danger and deliverance; and the invalid who had recovered his health, would cause an image of his eyes, hands, feet, or even of his whole body, to be fashioned in marble, earthenware, or other materials, and present it to the deity whose aid he might suppose to have effected his cure. These offerings were sometimes fixed in cavities of rocks adjoining the precincts of the temple, sometimes appended to the walls and columns of the sacred edifices themselves, and sometimes fastened by wax to the bodies of the statues, especially to the knees. In many parts of Greece there are still to be seen the rocky cavities which were used for this purpose, and in some instances the offerings themselves have been discovered; in the island of Santorin, for instance, there was found a votive figure, representing a man in a dropsical state. Occasionally the medicine which had been the instrument of cure was placed in the temples; as in the case which has been handed down to us of the goldsmith, who on his death-bed bequeathed an ointment to be deposited in a temple for the use of those who might be unable to see the physicians. This custom, so prevalent among the ancients, has frequently obtained in modern countries; it is partially practised, indeed, at the present day, by the followers of the Roman Catholic and Greek religions. Dr. Clarke tells us, too, that in the churches of Denmark and Norway, there are votive pictures of escapes from banditti and recoveries from illness, accompanied by inscriptions which record the details of each case.

As Esculapius was peculiarly the patron of Cos, and the temple there erected to him was a very famous one, we may easily understand how it became possessed of so many votive offerings. Invalids were allowed to sleep in the porticoes and in the interior of the sacred edifice, as was, indeed, the case in other places; and there, according to the superstitious belief of the times, it was supposed that they received, by way of dreams, the necessary advice concerning the remedies to be used, for procuring the restoration of health. The inscriptions with which they accompanied their offerings on the recovery, always set forth the nature of the remedy which had effected it. It was from a mass of such cases collected in the temple at Cos, that Hippocrates is said to have framed a regular set of canons for the art of medicine, and thus to have "reduced the practice of physic to a system;" Pliny says that he is reported to have copied them, and the temple being afterwards burnt down, to have instituted the branch of medical science called "clinical."

No certain traces of the Asclepieium have been discovered by modern travellers; nor has its site been fixed by them with anything like precision. Dr. Clarke conjectures that the mosque which stands near the modern market-place may occupy its original position. There was formerly a grove consecrated to Esculapius near the ancient temple; and almost all the trees were cut down for ship-timber by a Roman senator, who had been one of the assassins of Julius Cæsar. The doctor hazards the suggestion that the marvellous plane-tree of which we have already

spoken, "if it be not a venerable remnant of this grove, may, as a spontaneous produce resulting from. it, denote its actual situation;" and the conjecture seems to be warranted by the number of ancient altars still remaining about the body of this tree. There is a curious record of Hippocrates still preserved here, in the name of the fountain from which the town of Cos is supplied with water at the present day; it is situate at the distance of about three miles from the shore, and is called the Fountain of Hippocrates. The visiter is shown a cave, and an arched passage leading to a lofty vaulted chamber, with an aperture at the top, admitting light and air from the surface of the mountain, in which the excavation is formed. The water of the spring is warm, and of a chalybeate flavour; it gushes violently from the spring into a small basin. It is conducted to the town by a sort of aqueduct, or channel, covered with tile and stone; it flows with rapidity, and is cool and refreshing before it reaches its destination.

The surface of this land is of a diversified character, presenting an agreeable intermixture of the most delightful plains with gentle hills, occasionally swelling into mountainous elevations, more especially towards the eastern side. The fertility of the soil has always been remarkable; the Greek geographer, Strabo, speaks of it as "very fruitful," in the age of Augustus; and the Venetian writers of the seventeenth century, picture it as "abounding in all things necessary to the human state." There are now extensive orange and lemon plantations close to the town of Cos; and the very large export of the fruits which they yield, to all parts of the Archipelago, is one of the chief branches of the trade which the island still enjoys. Dr. Clarke purchased lemons at the rate of three shillings for a thousand," notwithstanding the very great demand then made for them to supply the British fleet:" oranges, he says, were not so cheap, being less abundant. A later traveller gives the same price for both, but fixes it higher. Figs are also produced, though only in a quantity sufficient for the consumption of the island; they are sold according to the plenty, at the rate of from five to fourteen pounds for a penny. Dr. Clarke saw pomegranates and melons in great abundance, and "of delicious flavour;" and also "fine rich grapes selling for less than a halfpenny the pound." The chief consumption of these grapes is in the making of wine,— for which the island has always been celebrated.

It is melancholy to think, that blest as it is in such profusion with the gifts of Nature, this large and beautiful island should exhibit the dismal picture of misery which it offers at the present day. Mr. Turner characterizes it, as being in the most wretched condition of all the islands which he had seen in the Mediterranean, with the single exception, perhaps, of Cyprus; and had we not the testimony of other travellers to the same effect, we should still possess ample evidence of the misery which afflicts it, in the steady progress of its depopulation for a considerable time. The number of its inhabitants amounted formerly to 20,000; at the close of the last century it was reduced to 10,000, and twenty years ago it just exceeded 8000, there being then about 5000 Turks, 3000 Greeks, and 50 Jews. We have few means of estimating the population at the present day; it has been stated as low as 4000 souls. The causes of the decrease are to be found in the ravages of the plague, which has often carried off a third of the inhabitants,-in the consumption of the many wars which the Turks have waged within the last hundred years, and in the loss occasioned by emigration.