"'(1). The word "Quaternion" requires no explanation, since... it occurs in the Scriptures and in Milton. Peter was delivered to "four quaternions of soldiers" to keep him; Adam, in his morning hymn, invokes air and the elements, "which in quaternion run." The word (like, the Latin "quaternio," from which it is derived) means simply a set of four, whether those "four" be persons or things."