Naturally, nations below the upper levels of culture have little or no science to teach us, but many of their ideas are interesting as marking stages in the history of the human mind. Thus, in the art of counting, which is one of the foundations of science, it is common to find the primitive method of counting by fingers and toes still in practical use, while in many languages the numeral words have evidently grown up out of such a state of things. Thus _lima_, the well-known Polynesian word for five, meant “hand,” before it passed into a numeral. All devices for counting are worth notice, from the African little sticks for units and larger sticks for tens, up to the ball-frames with which the Chinese and Russian traders reckon so rapidly and correctly. It is a sign of lowness in a tribe not to use measures and weights, and where these appear in a rough way, it is interesting to discover whether vague lengths, such as finger, foot, pace, are used, or whether standard measures and weights have come in. If so, these should be estimated according to our standards with as much accuracy as possible, as it may thus become possible to ascertain their history. In connection with this comes the question of money, as to whether commerce is still in the rudimentary stage of exchanging gifts, or has passed into regular barter, or risen to regular trade, with some sort of money to represent value, even if the circulating medium be only cowries, or bits of iron, or cakes of salt, all which are current money to this day in parts of Africa. Outside the present higher civilisation, more or less primitive ideas of astronomy and geography will be found to prevail. Among tribes like the American Indians the obvious view suggested by the senses still prevails, that the earth is a flat round disc (or sometimes square, with four quarters or winds) overarched by a solid dome or firmament, on which the sun and moon travel—in inland countries going in and out at holes or doors on the horizon, or, if the sea bounds the view, rising from and plunging into its waves at sunrise and sunset. These early notions are to us very instructive, as they enable us to realise the conceptions of the universe which have come down to us in the ancient books of the world, but which scientific education has uprooted from our own minds. With these cosmic ideas are found among the lowest races the two natural periods of time, namely, the lunar month and the solar year, determined by recurring winters, summers, or rainy seasons. Such tribes divide the day roughly by the sun’s height in the sky, but among peoples civilised enough to have time-measures and the sun-dial, there is a tolerably accurate knowledge of the sun’s place at the longest and shortest days, and indeed, throughout the year. The astronomy of such countries as India has been of course described by professional astronomers; but among ruder nations there is still a great deal unrecorded—for instance, as to the