170 T ransactions. 



— this was nga hum, the whole ten fingers ; tekau ma tahi, 

 eleven; tekati ma rua, twelve, &c.; riia tekau, tw-enty ; and so 

 on to kotalii ran, 100, and kotahi mono, 1,000 : beyond that 

 all numbers were mano tinitini. . . . Unless they added 

 takitahi (ouce told) to these shakes they meant double : thus 

 kotahi rail would signify 200, unless they said kotahi rav, 

 takitahi (a hundred once told). P71 also signifies counting by 

 pairs, unless qualified by the word topu : thus kotahi jm topic 

 is simply two, but e riia pti is two pairs, or four; ngahuru (ten) 

 is thus twenty. The word hoko signifies the doubling of 

 twenty : nga hoko rua, forty ; nga hoko torn, sixty ; nga hoko 

 tekau, two hundred . . . kotahi ran hoko lohitii, one 

 hundred doubled and seven twenties. Tojnc also signifies 

 a pair doubled, or four." 



The items in the above which arrest our attention are : 

 The shaking of the hand, or hands, to show that five, or ten, is 

 complete; and the use of tekau for ten, which the reverend 

 author seems to imply was an ancient custom. It would be 

 interesting to know what tribe these notes were obtained 

 from. His remarks on the terms pti and top)u are peculiar. I 

 cannot see how top)u qualifies piu. Pu means a pair, and re- 

 quires no qualification. Kotahi pit topu sounds very tautolo- 

 gical, while hoko scarcely signifies the doubling of twenty, but 

 the multiplying by that number. 



We may note that the Maori had no knowledge of cipher- 

 ing, or any form of abacus, so far as we know. They possessed, 

 apparently, one only mnemonic aid to memory in their genea- 

 logical staves. This was a piece of hardwood about 1 in. in 

 diameter and 3 ft. or so in length. It had on one side a series 

 of square-edged notches cut in it, the pieces of wood left 

 between the notches being about |-in. or fin. These repre- 

 sented each a generation. These staves were, if necessary, 

 used in a boustrophedon manner. They were but a crude aid 

 to memory, and their use does not appear to have been very 

 common. 



The word nmtu is sometimes used after a round number 

 to show that no excess exists — e.g., kotahi rau mutxo (one hun- 

 dred and no excess). 



Ngahoro is another term used to imply an excess number : 

 thus hokorua ngahoro is equivalent to liokorua makere, &c., and 

 means a hokorua and an excess number. If hokorua is used 

 in the toi^u sense, then the above expression mtiy be used for 

 any number from forty-one to fifty-nine inclusive. 



Table No. 3 : In this table we see the old-time Maori 

 method of enumerating persons. The prefix toko, used only 

 when speaking of persons, has already been noted, as also 

 the terms tingaliuru and tekau. 



