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Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
if the man would signify that the amount which he desired to indi- 
cate exceeded the limits of his primitive notation — for, like the Greek 
juvpioi, the Latin centum and mille, and the English “ million,” the higher 
terms of all notations have denoted an indefinite number.* As regards 
the gesture, we may refer to the Egyptian hieroglyph $ , which 
likewise denoted a numerical value ; and, as regards the form, we may 
perhaps compare some of the Cretan and dEgean signs given in Mr 
Evans’s paper (p. 348) — for example, f S'. At a very early 
period, and possibly under the influence of the Chalcidian character 
Y sy ^ (Gardthausen, Taf. i. ; Thompson, p. 10 ; Taylor, ii. 59, 67, 
90-1), the symbol which the Romans employed to designate fifty 
emerges in the form \i/. The attenuation which, on the above 
hypothesis, it has undergone in transition from the pictographic to 
the symbolic stage is not more remarkable than that of other symbols 
(cf. the negation signs : f Californian Indian Maya o, 
Egyptian **— : Clodd, p. 122); nor is it greater than the modifica- 
tion which, as a matter of fact and not of inference, it afterwards 
suffered in the process of assimilation to the form of the Latin “ ell,” 
L.+ With that earlier process of attenuation or modification we may 
compare the later dismemberment which this letter, and with it the 
henceforth identical numerical sign, underwent, as shown in the uncial 
form L and the minuscule R so that fifty is now represented by L and 1 
alike. Other characters have had a similar history, as Ff and Tt ; and 
the progressive attenuation of the Greek aspirate may likewise be 
compared : h, L, f (Thompson, pp. 71-72 ; Taylor, ii. 86). 
This gesture of the raised arms, then, according to our second 
principle, signified the completion of the preceding series of five 
similar gestures (viz. XXXXX), and would thus acquire the value of 
that series and ultimately supersede it. We have discussed the 
■ * “ A curious feature of the native languages is that few have any numerals above three 
or four. . . . Anything above the highest numeral is ‘ many.’ ” — N. W. Thomas, op. cit ., 
p. 27. 
“ Spix and Marti us [ Reise in Brazilien, p. 387] say of the low tribes of Brazil, ‘ They 
count commonly by their finger joints, so up to three only. Any larger number they- 
express by the word “many.”’” — Tylor, Primitive Culture , 4th ed., London, 1903, i. 242. 
t See First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology . . . Smithsonian Institution, 
1879-80 (Washington, 1881), pp. 355-6. 
% Mommsen ( Die unteritalischen DialeJde , Leipzig, 1850, p. 33) gives the form and evolu- 
tion of the Roman sign for fifty as follows : — ^ ^ ^ I j ^ 
