they can and do count considerably farther, but it is by falling back on a lower and ruder method of expression than speech — the gesture-language. The place in intellectual development held by the art of counting on one's fingers, is well marked in the description which Massieu, the Abbé Sicard's deaf-and-dumb pupil, gives of his notion of numbers in his comparatively untaught childhood: 'I knew the numbers before my instruction, my fingers had taught me them. I did not know the ciphers; I counted on my fingers, and when the number passed 10 I made notches on a bit of wood.'[1] It is thus that all savage tribes have been taught arithmetic by their fingers. Mr. Oldfield, after giving the account just quoted of the capability of the Watchandie language to reach 4 by numerals, goes on to describe the means by which the tribe contrive to deal with a harder problem in numeration.
'I once wished to ascertain the exact number of natives who had been slain on a certain occasion. The individual of whom I made the enquiry, began to think over the names ... assigning one of his fingers to each, and it was not until after many failures, and consequent fresh starts, that he was able to express so high a number, which he at length did by holding up his hand three times, thus giving me to understand that fifteen was the answer to this most difficult arithmetical question.' Of the aborigines of Victoria, Mr. Stanbridge says: 'They have no name for numerals above two, but by repetition they count to five; they also record the days of the moon by means of the fingers, the bones and joints of the arms and the head.'[2] The Bororos of Brazil reckon: 1. couai; 2. macouai; 3. ouai; and then go on counting on their fingers, repeating this ouai.[3] Of course it no more follows among savages than among ourselves that, because a man counts
