Humboldt remarks, [Footnote: _Personal Narrative_, chap, i. p. 32, Bohn's ed. London, 1852.] 'We find no example of this polyandry except amongst the people of Thibet.' Yet he must have heard of the Nayr of Malabar, if not of the Todas on the Nilagiri Hills. D. Agustin Millares [Footnote: _Historia de la Gran Canaria_. Published at Las Palmas.] explains the custom by 'men and women being born in almost equal proportions,' the reverse being the fact. Equal proportions induce the monogamic relation. Learned M. d'Avezac derives 'Guanche' from Guansheri or Guanseri, a Berber tribe described by El-Idrisi and Leo Africanus. This is better than finding it in the Keltic _gwuwrn, gwen_, white. Older authorities hold it a corruption of 'Vinchune,' the indigenous name of the Nivarian race. Again, 'the inhabitants of Tenerife called themselves Guan (the Berber Wan), one person, Chinet or Chinerf, Tenerife; so that _Guanchinet_ meant a man of Tenerife, and was easily corrupted to Guanche. Thus, too, Glas's 'Captain Artemis' was Guan-arteme, the one or chief ruler. Vieira derives 'Tenerf' or'Chenerf' from the last king; and old MSS. have 'Chenerife.' The popular voice says it is composed of 'Tener,' mountain or snow, and of 'ryfe,' snow or mountain. Pritchard [Footnote: _Researches into the Physical History of Mankind_, book iii. chap. ii.] applied the term Guanche to all the Canarian races, and he is reproached for error by M. de Macedo, [Footnote: 'Ethnological Remarks,' &c., by J. J. de Costa de Macedo, of Lisbon, _Royal Geographical Society's Journal_, vol. ii. p. 172. _Wanderings in West Africa_, i. 116, contains my objections to his theory.] who would limit it to the Tenerifans. The same occurs in the Rev. Mr. Delany [Footnote: _Notes of a Residence in the Canary Islands_, &c. London, 1861.] and in Professor Piazzi Smyth, [Footnote: _An Astronomer's Experiment_, p. 190. L. Reeve, London, 1868.] who speaks of the 'Guanches of Grand Canary and Teneriffe.' According to popular usage all were right, 'Guanche' being the local and general term for the aborigines of the whole archipelago. But the scientific object that it includes under the same name several different races. The language is also a point of dispute: some opine that all the islanders had one tongue, others that they were mutually unintelligible; many that it was Berber (Numidian, Getulian, and Garamantan), a few that it was less distinctly Semitic. The two chaplains of De Béthencourt [Footnote: Bontier and Le Verrier, _Histoire de la première Découverte e Conquête des Canaries_. Bergeron, Paris, 1630.] noted its resemblance with that of the 'Moors' of Barbary. Glas, who knew something of Shilha, or Western Berber, made the same observation. But the Genoese pilot Niccoloso di Recco during the expedition of A.D. 1344 collected the numerals, and two of these, _satti_ (7) and _tamatti_ (8), are less near the original than the Berberan _set_ and _tem_.