I. In architecture, the upper part of the capital of a column, supporting the entablature, said to have been designed from a square tile laid over a basket. The shape of the abacus differs in different orders.

II. Among the ancients, a cupboard.

III. The mystic staff carried by the grand master of the Templars. Its head was of silver, marked with the peculiar cross of the order; but it was supposed to bear another secret device, concealed or disguised, and revealed only to the initiated, being no other than the ortho-phallic symbol of heathen antiquity, indicating the worship of the generative power as distinct from the creative attribute of God.

IV. A calculating machine to facilitate arithmetical computations. In China it is much employed. The Chinese call it shwan-pan. A man who uses the shwanpan can tell the amount of a column of figures the moment they are read off to him. It is also found in Russian shops and counting houses. Improved forms of this machine are known in the United States as the "adder."

Corinthian Abacus.

Doric Abacus.