Many years ago a statement appeared which at once attracted attention and awakened curiosity. It was to the effect that the Maoris, the aboriginal inhabitants of New Zealand, used as the basis of their numeral system the number 11; and that the system was quite extensively developed, having simple words for 121 and 1331, _i.e._ for the square and cube of 11. No apparent reason existed for this anomaly, and the Maori scale was for a long time looked upon as something quite exceptional and outside all ordinary rules of number-system formation. But a closer and more accurate knowledge of the Maori language and customs served to correct the mistake, and to show that this system was a simple decimal system, and that the error arose from the following habit. Sometimes when counting a number of objects the Maoris would put aside 1 to represent each 10, and then those so set aside would afterward be counted to ascertain the number of tens in the heap. Early observers among this people, seeing them count 10 and then set aside 1, at the same time pronouncing the word _tekau_, imagined that this word meant 11, and that the ignorant savage was making use of this number as his base. This misconception found its way into the early New Zealand dictionary, but was corrected in later editions. It is here mentioned only because of the wide diffusion of the error, and the interest it has always excited.[217] Aside from our common decimal scale, there exist in the English language other methods of counting, some of them formal enough to be dignified by the term _system_--as the sexagesimal method of measuring time and angular magnitude; and the duodecimal system of reckoning, so extensively used in buying and selling. Of these systems, other than decimal, two are noticed by Tylor,[218] and commented on at some length, as follows: "One is the well-known dicing set, _ace_, _deuce_, _tray_, _cater_, _cinque_, _size_; thus _size-ace_ is 6-1, _cinques_ or _sinks_, double 5. These came to us from France, and correspond with the common French numerals, except _ace_, which is Latin _as_, a word of great philological interest, meaning 'one.' The other borrowed set is to be found in the _Slang Dictionary_. It appears that the English street-folk have adopted as a means of secret communication a set of Italian numerals from the organ-grinders and image-sellers, or by other ways through which Italian or Lingua Franca is brought into the low neighbourhoods of London. In so doing they have performed a philological operation not only curious but instructive. By copying such expressions as _due soldi_, _tre soldi_, as equivalent to 'twopence,' 'threepence,' the word _saltee_ became a recognized slang term for 'penny'; and pence are reckoned as follows: