The inability to combine articulations, which, when taken singly, are sufficiently easy of pronunciation, is another sign of deficiency of power over language, as an instrument, or medium, and, in some form or other, it is a common phænomenon; _e.g._, the sound of _s_, and the sound of[74]_tsh_, are pronounceable enough when taken singly; since we can say _shest_, and we can say _tshest_. The _combination_, however, of _stsh_ is difficult--at least to English organs. There is none such in our language; yet it is a favourite juxtaposition in the Slavonic tongues. Again, to a person unused to comparative philology, it may seem strange to be told that in the Finlandic dialects the combination of any two consonants in the same syllable, is rare: and that such words as _stab_, &c., in order to become pronounceable must be converted into _setab_, or _estab_, &c. Yet this inability to combine consonants with one another is, perhaps, the rule rather than the exception in language. Again, without admitting the notion of an aristocracy amongst the elements of the alphabet, and calling sounds like _r_ and _s_ the _noble_ letters, just as gold and silver are designated as the _noble_ metals, we may ask whether their absence in some of the more uncivilized languages, is not a fact of some import in the natural history of Man. It seems so to the present writer.[75] These episodical observations, however, form a long prelude to a very simple fact, viz.: that, as far as we are enabled to make a negative statement, the sound of _s_, wanting in many of the Polynesian dialects, is wanting in all the Australian ones. _Incomplete numeration of the Australians._--The import of an Australian having no more than the three, four, or five first numerals, and being thereby as unable to count the number of the fingers of his hands, as that of the hair of his head, is less equivocal. It speaks, at once, to a _minimum_ amount of intellectual power. Nevertheless, the same inability occurs elsewhere; especially in certain languages of South America. The only vocabulary of Australia, where the numerals run beyond five, is that of King George's Sound, as given in Mitchell's Australia. The political constitution (if so it can be called) of the Australians is preeminently simple, exhibiting a society of families rather than of tribes; and one of the facts connected with the evidence in favour of the unity of the Australian division of mankind is the remarkable distribution of families bearing the same name. The principal of these are the Ballaroke, the Tdondarup, the Ngotok, the Nagarnook, the Nogonyuk, the Mongalung, and the Narrangar.[76] Now, persons bearing one or the other of these names, may be found in parts of the country five hundred miles apart. Nor does this appear to be the effect of migration, since each tribe is limited by the jealousy of its neighbours to its own hunting-ground, beyond which it seldom passes.