Note 75 — Chapter III · INTERMEDIATE FORMS OF ABSTRACTION.

In the account of his travels among the Damaras (in his Tropical South Africa, p. 133) Galton says: “In practice, whatever they may possess in their language, they certainly use no numeral greater than three. When they wish to express four, they take to their fingers, which are to them as formidable instruments of calculation as a sliding-rule is to our English schoolboy. They puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for ‘units,’—yet they seldom lose oxen: the way in which they discover the loss of one, is not by the number of the herd being diminished, but by the absence of a face they know.” [This tallies with what we said above, Chap. I., as to so-called numeration in animals and children.] “When bartering is going on, 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. I have done so and seen a man first put two of the sticks apart and take a sight over them at one of the sheep he was about to sell. Having satisfied himself that one was honestly paid for, and finding to his surprise that exactly two sticks remained in hand to settle the account for the other sheep, he would be afflicted with doubts; the transaction seemed to come out too pat to be correct, and he would refer back to the first couple of sticks, and then his mind got hazy and confused, and wandered from one sheep to the other, and he broke off the transaction until two sticks were put into his hand and one sheep driven away, and then the other two sticks given him and the second sheep driven away.” Galton relates many other similar facts which he had himself witnessed.