“Eyre’s Sand Patch,” three definite terms are given—­kean, 1, koojal, 2, yalgatta, 3, while a fourth, murna, served to describe anything greater.  In all these examples the fourth numeral is indefinite; and the same statement is true of many other Australian languages.  But more commonly still we find 4, and perhaps 3 also, expressed by reduplication.  In the Port Mackay dialect[35] the latter numeral is compound, the count being warpur, 1, boolera, 2, boolera warpur, 3.  For 4 the term is not given.  In the dialect which prevailed between the Albert and Tweed rivers[36] the scale appears as yaburu, 1, boolaroo, 2, boolaroo yaburu, 3, and gurul for 4 or anything beyond.  The Wiraduroi[37] have numbai, 1, bula, 2, bula numbai, 3, bungu, 4, or many, and bungu galan or bian galan, 5, or very many.  The Kamilaroi[38] scale is still more irregular, compounding above 4 with little apparent method.  The numerals are mal, 1, bular, 2, guliba, 3, bular bular, 4, bular guliba, 5, guliba guliba, 6.  The last two numerals show that 5 is to these natives simply 2-3, and 6 is 3-3.  For additional examples of a similar nature the extended list of Australian scales given in Chapter V. may be consulted.

Taken as a whole, the Australian and Tasmanian tribes seem to have been distinctly inferior to those of South America in their ability to use and to comprehend numerals.  In all but two or three cases the Tasmanians[39] were found to be unable to proceed beyond 2; and as the foregoing examples have indicated, their Australian neighbours were but little better off.  In one or two instances we do find Australian numeral scales which reach 10, and perhaps we may safely say 20.  One of these is given in full in a subsequent chapter, and its structure gives rise to the suspicion that it was originally as limited as those of kindred tribes, and that it underwent a considerable development after the natives had come in contact with the Europeans.  There is good reason to believe that no Australian in his wild state could ever count intelligently to 7.[40]

In certain portions of Asia, Africa, Melanesia, Polynesia, and North America, are to be found races whose number systems are almost and sometimes quite as limited as are those of the South.  American and Australian tribes already cited, but nowhere else do we find these so abundant as in the two continents just mentioned, where example after example might be cited of tribes whose ability to count is circumscribed within the narrowest limits.  The Veddas[41] of Ceylon have but two numerals, ekkame[=i], 1, dekkamei, 2.  Beyond this they count otameekai, otameekai, otameekai, etc.; i.e. “and one more, and one more, and one more,” and so on indefinitely.  The Andamans,[42] inhabitants of a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal, are equally