he same meaning,
is a question I should like to see discussed {436} by some of your
correspondents. The word _taka_ signifies any thing _pressed_ or _stamped_,
anything on which an impression is made hence _a coin_; and is derived from
the Sanscrit root _tak_, to press, to stamp, to coin: whence, _tank_, a
small coin; and _tank-sala_, a mint; and (query) the English word _token_,
a piece of stamped metal given to communicants. Many of your readers will
remember that it used to be a common practice in England for copper coins,
representing a half-penny, penny, &c., stamped with the name of the issuer,
and denominated "tokens," to be issued in large quantities by shopkeepers
as a subsidiary currency, and received at their shop in payment of goods,
&c. May not _ticket_, defined by Johnson, "a _token_ of any right or debt
upon the delivery of which admission is granted, or a claim acknowledged,"
and _tick_, score or trust, (to go on _tick_), proceed from the same root?

J.S.

Bombay.

* * * * *

ON THE CULTIVATION OF GEOMETRY IN LANCASHIRE.

If our Queries on this subject be productive of no other result than that
of eliciting the able and judicious analysis subsequently given by MR.
WILKINSON (Vol. ii., p. 57.), they will have been of no ordinary utility.
The silent early progress of any strong, moral, social, or intellectual
phenomenon amongst a large mass of people, is always difficult to trace:
for it is not thought worthy of record at the time, and before it becomes
so distinctly marked as to attract attention, even tradition has for the
most part died away. It then becomes a work of great difficulty, from the
few scattered indications in print (the books themselves being often so
rare[1] that "money will not purchase them"), with perhaps here and there a
stray letter, or a metamorphosed tradition, to offer even a probable
account of the circumstances. It requires not only an intimate knowledge of
the subject-matter which forms the groundwork of the inquiry, both in its
antecedent and cotemporary states, and likewise in its most improved state
at the present time; it also requires an analytical mind of no ordinary
powers, to separate the necessary from the probable; and these again from
the irrelevant and merely collateral.

MR. WILKINSON has shown himself to possess so many of the qualities
_essential_ to the historian of mathematical science, that we trust he will
continue his val