e than
one of the three natural bases to which allusion has already been made. Now
and then some anomalous fragment is found imbedded in an otherwise regular
system, which carries us back to the time when the savage was groping his
way onward in his attempt to give expression to some number greater than
any he had ever used before; and now and then one of these fragments is
such as to lead us to the border land of the might-have-been, and to cause
us to speculate on the possibility of so great a numerical curiosity as a
senary or a septenary scale. The Bretons call 18 _triouec'h_, 3-6, but
otherwise their language contains no hint of counting by sixes; and we are
left at perfect liberty to theorize at will on the existence of so unusual
a number word. Pott remarks[208] that the Bolans, of western Africa, appear
to make some use of 6 as their number base, but their system, taken as a
whole, is really a quinary-decimal. The language of the Sundas,[209] or
mountaineers of Java, contains traces of senary counting. The Akra words
for 7 and 8, _paggu_ and _paniu_, appear to mean 6-1 and 7-1, respectively;
and the same is true of the corresponding Tambi words _pagu_ and
_panjo_.[210] The Watji tribe[211] call 6 _andee_, and 7 _anderee_, which
probably means 6-1. These words are to be regarded as accidental variations
on the ordinary laws of formation, and are no more significant of a desire
to count by sixes than is the Wallachian term _deu-maw_, which expresses 18
as 2-9, indicates the existence of a scale of which 9 is the base. One
remarkably interesting number system is that exhibited by the Mosquito
tribe[212] of Central America, who possess an extensive quinary-vigesimal
scale containing one binary and three senary compounds. The first ten words
of this singular scale, which has already been quoted, are:

1. kumi.
2. wal.
3. niupa.
4. wal-wal = 2-2.
5. mata-sip = fingers of one hand.
6. matlalkabe.
7. matlalkabe pura kumi = 6 + 1.
8. matlalkabe pura wal = 6 + 2.
9. matlalkabe pura niupa = 6 + 3.
10. mata-wal-sip = fingers of the second hand.

In passing from 6 to 7, this tribe, also, has varied the almost universal
law of progression, and has called 7 6-1. Their 8 and 9 are formed in a
similar manner; but at 10 the ordinary method is resumed, and is continued
from that point onward. Few number systems contain as many as three
numerals which are associated with 6 as their ba