UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 313 



antediluvian times there must have been a special 

 mental activity in the way of invention and discovery, 

 not surpassed in subsequent ages, and perhaps not 

 equalled until our modern days. With all this ac- 

 cumulated knowledge, man must have made his debut 

 in the early seats of post-diluvian population. 



The tally as a means of recording numbers is found 

 on pre-historic human sites in Europe, though, as 

 already suggested, some supposed tallies may in reality 

 have been used in playing games. It is universal 

 among rude tribes, and occurs, to some extent, among 

 civilized nations. Man must have begun his existence 

 as an enumerator, and counting is a difficult matter, 

 especially where large numbers are concerned.* Fur- 

 ther, so soon as we begin to add and subtract, we 

 have launched ourselves on the boundless sea of 

 mathematics. So the tally, with its outgrowth of the 

 quipa, the wampum string, and the abacus or reckon- 

 ing frame, came into use to economize thought and 

 memory, and to preserve records of numbers. But 

 thought and memory must have already existed before 

 even the rudest tally could be of use. Catlin records, 

 in his notes on the American Indians, a curious illus- 

 tration of the failure of this primitive method, in the 

 case of two Indians from the western prairies, who, 

 being about to travel in the United States, undertook 

 to reckon up the lodges of the white man as they 



Custom makes us unfamiliar with the primary difficulty 

 of abstract numeration, which we perceive, however, in chil- 

 dren and in some low savage tribes, in whom disuse has im- 

 paired this faculty or prevented it from being developed. 



