The idea lying at the root of our own decimal notation, which has long since been noted by Lepsius, Donaldson, and other philologists, as the source of names of Greek and Latin numerals, is no less discernible in the rudest savage tongues. Among the South Australians the simple names for numerals are limited to two, viz. _ryup_, one, and _politi_, two; the two together express “three”; _politi-politi_, four; and then “five” is indicated by the term _ryup-murnangin_, _i.e._ one hand; ten by _politi-murnangin_, _i.e._ two hands. The same idea is apparent in the dialects of Hawaii, Raratonga, Viti, and New Zealand, in the use of the one term: _lima_, _rima_, _linga_, _ringa_, etc., for hand and for the number five. _Fulu_ and its equivalents stand for “ten,” apparently from the root _fu_, whole, altogether; while the word _tau_, which in the Hawaiian signifies “ready,” in the Tahitian “right, proper,” and in the New Zealand, “expert, dexterous,” is the common Polynesian term for the right hand. In the Vitian language, as spoken in various dialects throughout the Viti or Fiji Islands, the distinction is still more explicitly indicated. There is first the common term _linga_, the hand, or arm; then the ceremonial term _daka_, employed exclusively in speaking of that of a chief, but which, it may be presumed, also expresses the right hand; as, while there is no other word for it, a distinct term _sema_ is the left hand. The root _se_ is found not only in the Viti, but also in the Samoa, Tonga, Mangariva, and New Zealand dialects, signifying “to err, to mistake, to wander”; _semo_, unstable, unfixed; while there is the word _matau_, right, dexter, clearly proving the recognition of the distinction. In the case of the Viti or Fijian, this is the more noticeable, as there appears to be some reason for believing that left-handedness is exceptionally prevalent among the natives of the Fiji Islands. In 1876 a correspondent of the _Times_ communicated a series of letters to that journal, in which he embodied anthropological notes on the Fijians, obtained both from his own observations during repeated visits to the Islands, and from conversation with English, American, and German settlers, at the port of call, and on the route between San Francisco and the Australian colonies. “The Fijians,” he says, “are quite equal in stature to white men; they are better developed relatively in the chest and arms than in the lower limbs; they are excellent swimmers, and, if trained, are good rowers. Left-handed men are more common among them than among white people; three were pointed out in one little village near the anchorage.” Yet here, as elsewhere, it is exceptional. Vague statements from time to time appear, affirming a prevalence of left-handedness among certain barbarous races. A writer in the _Medical Record_ in 1886 says: “No purely left-handed race has ever been discovered, although there seems to be a difference in different tribes. Seventy per cent