256 GEOEGE JOHN ROMANES isss- 



I have sent these facts to you, Sir, because I think 

 that they bear out the psychological distinction which 

 is drawn in your leading article of the 17th inst. 

 Briefly put, this distinction amounts to that between 

 sensuous estimation and intellectual notation. Any 

 child, a year after emerging from infancy, and not yet 

 knowing its numerals, could immediately see the 

 difference between five pigs and six pigs, and there- 

 fore, as your writer indicates, it would be an extra- 

 ordinary fact if a savage were unable to do so. The 

 case, of course, is different where any process of 

 calculation is concerned : e.g. ' each sheep must be 

 paid for separately; thus, suppose two sticks of 

 tobacco to be the rate of exchange for one sheep, it 

 would sorely puzzle a Damara to take two sheep and 

 give him four sticks.' (F. Galton, i Tropical South 

 Africa,' p. 213.) But if the savage had to deal with 

 a larger number of pigs the insufficiency of his sensu- 

 ous estimation would increase with the increase of 

 numbers, until a point would be reached at which, if 

 he were to keep count at all, he would be obliged to 

 resort to some system of notation, i.e. to mark off 

 each separate unit with a separate nota, whether by 

 fingers, notches, or words. Similarly with the sense 

 of hearing and the so-called muscular sense. We 

 can tell whether a clock strikes 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 without 

 naming each stroke, and whether we have walked 1, 

 2, 3, 4, or 5 paces without naming each pace, but we 

 cannot in this way be sure whether a clock has struck 

 11 or 12, or we ourselves have walked as many yards. 



Thus there is counting and counting, distinguish- 

 ing between low numbers by directly appreciating 



