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738 WBI8BERG WRITING ed., 1875), and Caspari's Arabic grammar, with numerous additions and emendations (2d ed., revised and enlarged, 1875). His other works comprise "Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum" (3 vols., 1870-72) ; "Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles," Syriac and English (2 vols., 1871); and "Oriental Series of Facsimiles of Ancient Manuscripts " (1876 et eq.~). WRISBEKG, Hrinrlrh Aignst, a German anato- mist, born at Andreasberg, Hanover, June 20, 1739, died March 29, 1808. He graduated in medicine at Gottingen in 1763, became a pro- fessor, and taught midwifery and anatomy. His name is connected with the " cartilages of Wrisberg," or the " cuneiform cartilages," two small elongated bodies, included in the aryteno- epiglottidean folds of mucous membrane -in the larynx, first described by him, and with the "lesser internal cutaneous nerve," or "nerve of Wrisberg," a branch of the brachial plexus which is distributed to the integument of the inside of the arm above the elbow. He published treatises on respiration and animal heat, the anatomy of the embryo, the infusorial animalcules, the fifth pair of cranial nerves, the nerves of the abdominal viscera, the bra- chial nerves, the gravid uterus, Fallopian tubes, ovaries, and corpus luteum. WRIT (in Norman French and law Latin, breve), a word used from very early times to designate any judicial process or precept, by which the sovereign, whether state or person, commands the proper executive officer, usually the sheriff, or in the courts of the United States the marshal, to do some act. It must be at- tested by a judge, usually the chief justice of the court to which it is returnable, who thus bears testimony to the fact that the command is lawful and issues from the sovereign ; and this attestation of the court or judge is certified by the clerk of the court. Writs were former- ly much more numerous than now. Those still in use may be divided into: 1, original writs, by which all suits at law are begun; 2, writs of mesne process, which issue in the in- termediate proceedings ; and 3, writs of execu- tion, by which the final judgment or decree of the court is carried into operation. WRITERS' CRAMP. See SCRIVENERS' PALSY. WRITING, the art of expressing ideas by visible signs or characters inscribed on some material. It is either ideographic or phonetic. Ideographic writing may be either pictorial, representing objects by imitating their forms, or symbolic, by indicating their nature or pro- portions. Phonetic writing may be syllabic or alphabetic; in the former each character re- presents a syllable, in the latter a single letter. Of the origin of this art nothing is positively known. The Egyptians ascribed it to Thoth; the Greeks to Mercury or Cadmus; and the Scandinavians to Odin. The first step toward writing was probably the rude pictorial repre- sentation of objects, without any indication of the accessories of time or place ; the next the application of a symbolic signification to some of these figures, so that the picture of two legs, for example, represented not only two legs, but also the act of walking. Pictures, abbre- viated for convenience, gradually became con- ventional signs, and in time these characters were made to stand for the sounds of spoken language. The various systems of writing of the ancient world had probably at least three different sources, the Egyptian, the Assyrian, and the Chinese systems, all of which were originally hieroglyphic. The Egyptians prac- tised four distinct styles of writing, the hiero- glyphic, hieratic, demotic or enchorial, and Coptic. Hieroglyphic writing, which was in use much earlier than 3000 B. 0., was probably at first entirely ideographic ; its symbols be- came gradually used to represent abstract ideas, and in time some acquired a phonetic value. The phonetic characters are both syllabic and alphabetic. In the latter pictorial figures are used to express the initial letters of the words which they represent ; for example, the figure of an eagle (akhom) stands for a, of an owl (mulag) for TO, &c. The hieratic writing, which probably came into use before 2000 B. 0., was a simplified form of the hieroglyphic style, in which the pictorial symbols developed through a stage of linear hieroglyphs into a kind of cursive hand. The demotic or enchorial wri- ting was a still simpler form of the hiero- glyphic, and a nearer approach to an alpha- betic system. It was in use from about the 7th century B. 0. till the 2d century A. D., when it was gradually superseded by the Cop- tic, which grew out of the hieratic and demotic under Greek influences. (See EGYPT, LAN- GUAGE AND LITERATURE OF, and COPTIC LAN- GUAGE.) The Ethiopians also used hieroglyphs similar to those of the Egyptians, and their current written language resembled the Egyp- tian demotic, but its alphabet had fewer sym- bols. At a later period a third graphic system, somewhat analogous to the Coptic, came into use, which may be called Ethiopio Greek. For the present Ethiopic or Abyssinian system, see ETHIOPIA, LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE OF. With what people the Assyrian cuneiform or sphenographic system of writing originated is not known, but it was originally without doubt a hieroglyphic system, and became gradually modified by the different nations which occu- pied the Assyrian empire, until it assumed the form of the present known inscriptions. There are three classes of cuneiform characters, the Assyrian or Babylonian, the Scythian or Me- dian, and the Persian. The first is the most complicated, containing from 600 to 700 sym- bols ; the second is less complicated, but con- tains about 100 symbols, or three times as many as the third, which is almost purely alphabetic. (See CUNEIFORM INSOBIPTIONS.) For the Chi- nese graphic system, see CHINA, LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OP. Of these three original systems, the Egyptian is by far the most im- portant, for from its hieratic symbols was pro-