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X.⁠An Examination of an Inscription on a Barn in Kent; the Mantle Tree in the Parsonage House at Helmdon in Northamptonshire, as described by the Professors Wallis and Ward, revised; and Queries and Remarks on the general Use of Arabic Numerals in England.⁠In a Letter from the Rev. Samuel Denne, F.A.S. to Richard Gough, Esq.

 

Read Feb. 23; March 23, 30; May, 11, 18, and 25.

 

BY the kindness of the Rev. Peter Rashleigh I have it in my power to convey to you drawings, of inscriptions and shields of arms placed in the walls of buildings that are appendages to Preston Hall in Aylesford; and they will afford me an opportunity of satisfying you that the date on one of them was without sufficient grounds advanced in the hypothetical controversy respecting the time of the introduction of Arabic Numerals into this country.

N^o I, (Pl. XII. fig. 5,) is on a window-frame of stone at the north end of a very large barn. There is an engraving of it in Mr. Hasted's History of Kent^[1], and you will perceive (as, after inspecting the original, I hinted to you in a former letter) that in the Plate, o is not so near the centre of 2, as it ought to have been; but he is perfectly right in the suggestion that o was the character

1. Vol. II. p. 175.