246 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANBS 1888- 



journeys without showing any expectation of being 

 released, but begin to bray towards the end of the 

 fifth.i 



Prom this letter it will, I hope, be apparent that 

 so far as ' counting ' by merely sensuous computation 

 is concerned, the savage cannot be said to show much 

 advance upon the brute. ' Once, while I watched a 

 Damara floundering hopelessly in a calculation on one 

 side of me, I observed Dinah, my spaniel, equally em- 

 barrassed on the other. She was overlooking half a 

 dozen of her new-born puppies, which had been re- 

 moved two or three times from her, and her anxiety 

 was expressive as she tried to find out if they were 

 all present, or if any were still missing. She kept 

 puzzhng and running her eyes over them, backwards 

 and forwards, but could not satisfy herself. She evi- 

 dently had a vague notion of counting, but the figure 

 was too large for her brain. Taking the two as they 

 stood, dog and Damara, the comparison reflected no 

 great honour on the man.' (Galton, loc. cit.) But 

 the case, of course, is quite otherwise when, in virtue 

 of the greatly superior development of the sign-mak- 

 ing faculty in man, the savage is enabled to employ 

 the intellectual artifice of separate notation, whereby 

 he attains the conception of number in the abstract, 

 and so lays the foundation of mathematical science. 

 Now, so far as I am aware, there is no trustworthy 

 evidence of any race of savages who are without any 

 idea of separate notation. Whether the system of 

 notation be digital only, or likewise verbal, is, psycho- 

 logically speaking, of comparatively little moment. 



^ Fac. Ment. dea Anim. torn. ii. p. 207. 



