Brinton.] OA^ [Oct. 18, 



investigator, Pauli.* So far as I know no comparison of them 

 with the ancient Libyan has heretofore been attempted. 



It is important at the outset, to note that the above numeral 

 adjectives belong to a rather late Etruscan period, and do not pre- 

 sent the ancient forms of the words. These have been obtained by 

 a comparison of ancient inscriptions, and are presented as follows, 

 by Pauli and others : 



I, ?//<?/ ;t 2, cm; 3, sa/s ;'l 4, /lu^ ; 5, Oi/ns or //les ;^ 6, sas. 



These are the forms which we must use for our comparison as 

 being the most archaic. 



A similar process must be carried out with the modern Libyan 

 numerals; we must restore them to their earliest forms. 



At present the Kabyles employ the Arabic numerals for values 

 higher than two. Recourse must be had, therefore, to the Tuariks 

 and other tribes who retain the old expressions. An examination 

 proves that the ancient Libyan was a quinary system, based, as most 

 primitive numeration, on counting the fingers. The word for 

 hand, /ous, still means yfj',? in several of the dialects, as the Djerba 

 and the Mzab.|| In these quinary systems, drawn from the fingers, 

 the word for o/ie often means "the little one," referring either to 

 the short thumb or the little finger. At present the word for one in 

 the Berber dialects is some variation of en, which seems a loan 

 word from the Greek or early Latin (sv, uniis). Probably their na- 

 tive expression was mekk, or mey, which means " a little one ;" for 

 not only is that in accord with the general rule of quinary tongues,^[ 

 but we find the Cretans used the word a/-^a;^£? , borrowed, probably, 

 from the Libyans, in the sense "a single one " (Bugge). 



* His words are : "So wenig die Etrusliischeu Zalilworter indogermaiiisch sind, so 

 wenig sind sie mit irgend einer andern bis jetzt vergliclienen Sprache verwandt, sie 

 stelien bis jetzt vollstilndig isolirt," uhl supra, p. US. 



t See C. Pauli on the Etruscan Inscription iu the Museum of Leiden, in Allitalische 

 Stuclien, 1884, p. 61. 



I Bugge gives as other forms oizal, these variants— rcraZ, zelar, zerar, zerin, Etrusk. Forsch. 

 u. Siuclkn, 1883, p. 156. 



§ The ioimfnesi, where has passed into/, a frequent permutation iu the inscriptions, 

 is quoted by Bugge, from the Inscription F. :2335d. 



II Basset, Manuel de Langiie Kahyle, pp. 70, 71. 



1[ " Number," saj's J. Hammond Trumbull, in his philosophical essay on thenuraerala 

 in American tongues, "begins at 'two,' and we may assume that 'two' was the first 

 named numeral, tliough an earlier conception may be expressed in the name given to 

 'one.'" He adds that, in "many" American languages, the expression for "one" 

 means" the little one," "the least," the reference being to the finger. Transactions of 

 tke American Philological Association, for 1874, pp. 50, 72. 



