MERGE TO GYRENE. 541 sentence or any single word. Many of them are Greek letters, which are occasionally reversed, and placed in various positions, so that the same letter might at first sight be taken for several others distinct from itself ; sometimes two or more Greek letters appear together on the same stone, (occasionally united in a kind of cipher,) and their forms are often made out so rudely, from the dispatch used in cutting and often scratching them on the blocks of stone, as not to bear a very close resemblance to the usual ones. Some of them are not letters of any kind, but simply marks or characters invented for the occasion, as will be observed by the instances which are given of them below *. We fear, too, that even if the characters in question had really been inscriptions of the greatest importance, they must have been for ages lost to the world, and were certainly never intended to meet the public eye by those who had them placed where they are ; for the whole interior of the cisterns, or reservoirs, upon the stones ot We take these character.-? from the last page of Signor Della Celia’s book, where they are inserted without any remarks, and presume that they must be those alluded to , since all the other inscriptions which he has introduced in different parts of his work are accounted for, and are either in Greek or Latin. It wall be evident, we think, to all who are accustomed to see Greek and Roman quarry marks, that the characters in question are no other, and could never have been found on any single stone.