the —­“id:Chi” not for —­“id:xi iota”, but for —­“id:chi iota”.  The third sign originally invented for —­“id:chi iota” was probably allowed in most instances to drop; only on the mainland of Asia Minor it was retained, but received the value of —­“id:psi iota”.  The mode of writing adopted in Asia Minor was followed also by Athens; only in its case not merely the —­“id:psi iota”, but the —­“id:xi iota” also, was not received and in their room the two consonants continued to be written as before.—­II.  Equally early, if not still earlier, an effort was made to obviate the confusion that might so easily occur between the forms for —­“id:iota S” and for —­“id:s E”; for all the Greek alphabets known to us bear traces of the endeavour to distinguish them otherwise and more precisely.  Already in very early times two such proposals of change must have been made, each of which found a field for its diffusion.  In the one case they employed for the sibilant—­for which the Phoenician alphabet furnished two signs, the fourteenth ( —­“id:/\/\”) for —­“id:sh” and the eighteenth (—­“id:E”) for —­“id:s” —­not the latter, which was in sound the more suitable, but the former; and such was in earlier times the mode of writing in the eastern islands, in Corinth and Corcyra, and among the Italian Achaeans.  In the other case they substituted for the sign of —­“id:i” the simple stroke —­“id:I”, which was by far the more usual, and at no very late date became at least so far general that the broken —­“id:iota S” everywhere disappeared, although individual communities retained the —­“id:s” in the form —­“id:/\/\” alongside of the —­“I".—­III.  Of later date is the substitution of —­“id:\/” for —­“id:/\” (—­“id:lambda”) which might readily be confounded with —­“id:Gamma gamma”.  This we meet with in Athens and Boeotia, while Corinth and the communities dependent on Corinth attained the same object by giving to the —­“id:gamma” the semicircular form —­“id:C” instead of the hook-shape.—­IV.  The forms for —­“id:p” —­“id:P (with broken-loop)” and —­“id:r” —­“id:P”, likewise very liable to be confounded, were distinguished by transforming the latter into —­“id:R”; which more recent form was not used by the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Cretans, the Italian Achaeans, and a few other districts, but on the other hand greatly preponderated both in Greece proper and in Magna Graecia and Sicily.  Still the older form of the —­“id:r” —­“id:P” did not so early and so completely disappear there as the older form of the —­“id:l”; this alteration therefore beyond doubt is to be placed later.—­V.  The differentiating of the long and short -e and the long and short -o remained in the earlier times confined to the Greeks of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Aegean Sea.