The language of the Melanesian island of Annatom, one of the New Hebrides, may be taken as an instance of a state of speech in which the dual is natural. That language possesses a fourfold distinction of number in its personal pronouns, a different form to mark the singular, dual, trial, and plural: and the pronoun of the first person plural distinguishes in addition whether the person addressed is or is not included in the 'we-two,' 'we-three,' or 'we-many' of the speaker[6]. The same language however possesses only the first three numerals, and in the translation of the Bible into this dialect it was necessary to introduce the English words, four, five, &c. The two facts must be taken together: the luxuriance of the personal pronouns and the scanty development of numerals in such languages are two phenomena of the same law. The numeral 'four' to these tribes is said to bear the meaning of 'many' or 'several,' Another fact points in the same direction. In many languages, such as those of China, Further India and Mexico, it is customary in numbering to use what W. von Humboldt has called class-words. Here it is felt that an artificial unity has to be created, a common denominator found, and all reduced to it, before any summation can be carried out. Scholars and officials, in Chinese, can only be classed under the rubric of 'jewel' or dignity: and animals or fish by 'tails,' as if thereby only could one get a handle to hold them and count them. (The idiom still lingers in western languages: as in English, heads of cabbage, or of cattle: or German, _sechs Mann Soldaten._) So in Malay, instead of 'five boys' the phrase used is 'boy five-man': in other words, the numerals are supposed to inhere as yet in objects of a special kind or common occurrence[7]. And among the South Sea Islanders the consciousness of number is decidedly personal: that is to say, the distinction between one and two is first conceived as a distinction between 'I' and 'we two.' Even this amount of simplification surpasses what is found amongst some Australian tribes. There we find four duals: one for brothers and sisters: one for parents and children: one for husbands and wives: and one between brothers-in-law[8]. Each pair has a different form. We thus seem to see to what early language is applied: not to designate the objects of nature, but the members of the primitive family and their interests. The consciousness of numbers was first awakened by the need of distinguishing and combining the things that belonged to and specially interested men and women in the narrow circle of barbarian life[9]. It is not altogether imaginative in principle, though it may be occasionally surmise in details, to connect the rise of grammatical forms with the temperament and character of the people, and therefore with its social organisation. If the Bantoo or Caffir languages of Southern Africa instead of a single third personal pronoun and third