decided that the owner of this boy should give up his alleged right rather than destroy the child. When I took him he was so far gone as to be in the cold stage of starvation, but was soon brought round by a little milk given three or four times a day. On leaving Linyanti I handed him over to the charge of Sekeletu, who feeds his servants very well.” One’s only source of consolation is that among this and neighbouring tribes intellect is at so low a par that it is more than probable that they are mainly influenced by a horror of the sight of death, and not by motives of selfishness or wanton inhumanity. Moreover, if it were attempted to impart a knowledge of medicine to them, it is doubtful if in their profound obtuseness they would not inflict much more injury than work good on a patient that might come under their hands. One thing is certain, if the following instance furnished by the traveller Galton may be relied on, their arithmetical capabilities would have to be greatly cultivated and improved before they could be entrusted with the admeasurement of drugs; a drop more or less of which kills or cures. “They have no way of distinguishing days, but reckon by the rainy season, the dry season, or the pignut season. When inquiries are made about how many days’ journey off a place may be, their ignorance of all numerical ideas is very annoying. 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 an 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. 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 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. When a Damara’s mind is bent upon number it is too much occupied to dwell