ABNER KNEELAND'S BLASPHEMY. What was the blasphemy said to have been uttered by Abner Kneeland? WELLINGTON HOWARD.

The so-called blasphemy said to have been uttered by Mr. Kneeland was that he wrote and published an article in his liberal paper containing the following language - the word "they" referring to some church in Boston:

"They believe in a God which I do not.”

This was construed by the court as blasphemy, infidelity, and rank atheism.

Mr Kneeland showed to the court, producing the original manuscript copy sent to the printer, that he wrote the following: "They believe in a God, which I do not."

The printer by error had omitted the comma (,) after God. This, one will see, changed the meaning entirely; the church's God and Mr. Kneeland's God were not the same God, but both believed in a God.

A similar instance was the bnruing of Servetus at the stake at the instance, it is said of John Calvin. When all was ready for the torch, Servetus was told to say the following and save his life : "I believe that Jesus Christ was the eternal son of God." This he refused to say, but said he could truly say, "I believe that Jesus Christ was the son of the Eternal God." This would not satisfy Calvin and Servetus was burned. details consult Owen's "Debatable Land."

For fuller

ZEM ZEM. (Vol V, p. 69.) Wells have always been a necessary feature to ancient temples. The well of Zem Zem situate near the boundary of Yemen or Southern Arabia, was remarkable for its constant supply of not over-pure water, and was a great resort of caravans, when the peninsula was rich and fertile in prehistoric periods. After the change of the routes of commerce the region was abandoned, but some fourteen centuries or more ago, was occupied anew and everything restored. The goddess Al Haua was worshipped; the black stone and holy well were her symbols. This was in keeping with ancient practice. The Venus-Aphrodite of Paphos was represented by an oval stone; the Great Mother on Mount Pessinus in Asia Minor was commemorated in like manner; and we are told that Astarte finding a star or meteoric stone, consecrated it and placed it in the "Holy Island," Tyre. The black stone at Mekka and Holy Well were rep

resentations of the was her sanctuary.

Goddess, and the Kaba or mystic cone or traph The more modern succeed the ancient religions, chiefly by changing of names, while retaining the things signified. So we have the crescent of Venus as the standard of Islam; the Kaba is still the resort of pilgrims, as in pagan times, aud the sacred well Zem Zem is as holy in the present faith as it ever was in the palmy days of the former rites.

Wells appear so universal that every little tribe appears to have had its holy fount. The three Urd-sisters of Norse mythology-he Weird sisters of Macbeth-sit by the Urd fountain, water the roots of the world-tree Ygdrasil, and parcel out to mortals their allotments. In the bottom of the well of Mimir lay truth, wisdom and knowledge — doubtless "the knowledge of good and evil." Ingenious scholars derive the name Athena Pallas from Aith and ain, the Fountain of the Sun, which would intimate the Athenian goddess to denote the personified well of the Akropolis. A. WILDER.

FRANKLIN'S LETTER TO STRAHAN. (Vol. V, p. 72.) now my enemy, and I am yours."

"You are

J. B. McMaster says: "Another incident in his life that is commonly misunderstood, is the famous Strahan Letter; we mean, ending, 'you are now my enemy, and I am yours.' We know of no collection of his works and letters in which this document is not treated as a piece of spirited and sober writing. Yet it was no more than a jest. Had this not been so, all friendship, all correspondence, between the two would have ended the day the letter was received. But no such falling-out took place, and they went on exchanging letters long after the war had seriously begun."-Atlantic Monthly, October 1887, p. 325. A. WILDER, M, D., Newark, N. J.

ORIGIN OF DRUGGISTS' COLORED BOTTLES FOR SIGNS. Why are such used in drug-store windows for signs? DAVID.

It is due, like the symbolical figures often seen upon the bottles in question, to those of the most ancient chemists, the Moors, inhabitants of Arabia and Old Spain. They generally made their own chemicals, and for that purpose, as also for experimenting, they used retorts, and the like, many of which were in the shape of bottles; and these vessels became connected in the public mind with the men who used them, and hence became the sign of a chemist's shop.

D. M. DRURY, Brooklyn, N. Y.

QUESTIONS.

I. In what nation and at what date did married women first assume the name of their husbands? (Miss Mary Smith became Mrs. Mary Doe). OLD BACHELOR.

2. What was the Hanseatic League ?

3.

CALCHAS.

How many ways has this country been governed and what were the forms called ?

CALCHAS.

4. How came purple to be adopted as the imperial color?

5. Why does anxiety turn the hair gray?

D. M. DRURY.
D. M. DRURY.

6. What river in Italy has its name spelled with one letter?

JONATHAN.

7. An elderly lady from the Province of Quebec residing now in the States, has lost the year of her birth; she remembers well at eight years of age of some rebellion, insurrection or invasion taking place in the Province, and of the armed militia passing her home, which would be from 80 to 90 years ago. Who can give any account of any such Canadian disturbance? JOSEPH. F.

8. What is the meaning of the Indian name Piscataquog as applied to the river running through this town? Was there a Piscataquog ribe of Indians? M. G. S., Goffstown, N. H.

9. Has any other person, beside Lord Timothy Dexter, mentioned in a previous number, written and published a book without any punctuation? J. PAYSON SHIELDS.

How many editions of Euclid's Elements of Geometry have been published, that is by different persons? "The Imitations of Christ," and the works of Shakespeare have been similarly inquired for in previous numbers. J. PAYSON SHields.

II. In a mathematical work by William A. Myers, published in Cincinnati, 1874, he quotes the following:

"And the stone which the builders rejected was composed of three triangles."

From what is this quoted, as my researches in the Scriptures show the reading quite different? (See Ps. CXVIII, 22; Isaiah XXVIII, 16; Matt. XXI, 42; Mark XII, 10; Luke xx, 17; 1st Peter 11, 6-7).

STONE-SQUARER. 12. What is the secret of those persons who are prodigies in memory whereby many, by some system of mnemonics, repeat long decimals of hundreds of place accurately? F. K. GOLDSMITH.

What is the legend of the Seven Golden Cities? L. E. IEYES.
What city was destroyed by silence?

12.

13.

L. E. IEYES.

L. E. IEYES.

Cyclometry - Quadrature - Rectification.
다

During the past six years as editor of the American Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, we have received many kinds of questions involving the value of TM, and such questions have been discarded from the magazine on account of the endless discussion they engender. But of late the literature on "Cyclometry" having been inquired for, we at once decided to publish a bibliography and brief review of such works as our library furnished and a few mentioned in our serial literature.

CYCLOMETRY is the science of circle-measuring; à quadrature is the making of a square equivalent to a given circle; rectification of the circle is the finding of a straight line equal to the circumference of a given circle. These problems are one and the same in the sequel, and have engaged the attention of geometers from the earliest ages. The object of this paper is not to discuss the various methods devised to solve the famous problems, but to give a brief account of some of the quite numerous productions on the subject, and this in answer to many inquiries from all parts of the world, as to what has been written on the perplexing problems.

The secret key to the problems is the true value of the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of any circle, which ratio is denominated by the Greek letter (pi), the initial of the word periphereia, the circumference of a circle.

The first recorded instances of a value of One used by King Solomon in the making of

are found in the Bible. vessels for the Temple : "And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about." [I Kings VII, 23.] "Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about."

[II Chron. II, 2.]

The translation of Julia E. Smith gives these texts slightly different, the latter of which is as follows:

"And he will make the molten sea ten by the cubit from its lip to its lip, rounded round about; and five by the cubit its height; and a cord thirty by the cubit will surround it round about."

King Solomon's ratio (3) can be explained only that he measured the diameter from the outside, and the circumference on the inside, of the cord encircling the top of the molten sea.

There is another obscure allusion to a value of found in the name

Eliezer (which in Hebrew numerals is 318), the steward of Abram's house (Gen. xv, 2); this is a circumference value to a diameter 100. Eliezer was the "instructor" of three hundred and eighteen “trained servants" (Gen. XIV, 13). Josephus (Ant. Bk. I, VIII, 2) says Abram "communicated arithmetic and delivered the science of astronomy to the Egyptians." See J. R. Skinner's "Sources of Measure," p. 208, for more information on this value of π.

The earliest work giving an account of the many attempts to square a circle is that by J. E. Montucla, entitled Histoire des Recherches sur la Quadrature du Cercle, Paris, 1754. He adds to the title, "A Book intended to make known the Real Discoveries concerning this Celebrated Problem, and to serve as a Preventative against new attempts at its Solution." How far he has succeeded will appear in the following pages. From Babin's translation of this work we mention some of the earlier attempts to discover the quadrature.

Archimedes, about 250 B. C., applied himself to the problem and showed that the value of was less than 348 and more than 34. Campanus, author of the work "Tetragonismus," published in 1503, one of the earliest of two printed book on the quadrature, claims that the ratio of Archimedes was exactly 34, or 3.1428574. Archimedes' work was entitled De Dimensione Circuli.

Aristotle mentions two of his contemporaries, Antiphon and Bryson, who worked on the problem. Antiphon's method was to find the area of the circle by adding to the inscribed square the area of four isosceles triangles in the four segments, also the sum the eight similar triangles in the remaining segments, and so on till the circle was exhausted. Bryson's method resulted in the ratio, 33, or 3.75!

Sextus, a disciple of Pythagoras, claimed to have solved it, but his method has not come down to us. Aristophanes, in his "Comedy of the Clouds," ridicules Meton of Metonic-Cycle fame, for endeavoring to find the valve of π.

Nicomedes and Appolonius made researches on the problem; the former by means of the curve called the quadratrix, the discovery of which has been ascribed to Dinostratos. Eutocious tells us that Appolonius had approached nearer the true ratio than Archimedes did. Philo of Gadara had approached still nearer, so that his ratio differed by less than 100 from the usually accepted ratio. Anaxagoras, while in prison, spent much time on the problem. Hypocrates of