rapid use. John Bulwer, in his _Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of
the Hand_, printed in 1644, figures five manual alphabets for secret
communication.

[Footnote 4: The library of the New York Institution contains a copy of
this very rare edition, bearing the title _Abacus atque velustissima
Latinorum per digitos manusque numerandi (quinetiam loquendi)
consuetudo_, etc., Ratisbonae, 1532.]

[Footnote 5: For an exhaustive account of the gesture speech in
Anglo-Saxon monasteries and of the Cistercian monks, who were
under rigid vows of silence, see F. Kluge: _Zur Geschichte der
Zeichensprache.--Angelsachsische indicia Monaslerialia,_ in
_International Zeitschrift fur Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft,_ II. Band,
I. Halfte. Leipzig, 1885.]

[Footnote 6: _Reduccion de lasletras y arte para ensenar a hablar los
mudos_, 1620. The writer is under obligations to Sr. Santos M. Robledo,
of the Ministry of Public Works and Education, for advance sheets of the
reprint in beautiful facsimile of this rare work ordered by the Spanish
Government in 1881.]

[Footnote 7: The Abbe de l'Epee did not master the Spanish alphabet,
and, attaching but little importance to manual spelling, he was unsparing
in his criticism of _Messieurs the dactylologists_, but by "the irony of
fate" this alphabet occupies a face of the pedestal of one statue to his
memory, and in another statue the good Abbe is represented either as
receiving this alphabet from the skies or as devoutly using it.]

The first alphabet which appears to have been devised expressly for use
in teaching the deaf is that of George Dalgarno, of Aberdeen (1626-1687),
given in his remarkable philosophical treatise, _Didascalocophus, or the
Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor_, Oxford, 1680. A facsimile of this alphabet is
given in the _Annals_, vol. ix., page 19. Words are spelled by touching
with your finger the positions indicated, either upon your hand or upon
the hand of your interlocutor. An alphabet of the same character,
however, was not unknown at an earlier date. For Bulwer, in 1648, says:
"A pregnant example of the officious nature of the Touch in supplying the
defect or temporall incapacity of the other senses we have in one Master
_Babington_ of _Burntwood_ in the County of _Essex_, an ingenious
gentleman, who through some sicknesse becoming _deaf_, doth
notwithstanding feele words, and as if he had an eye in his finger, sees
signes in the darke; whose Wife discourseth very perfec