galton.org 89
Number-Forms
89
the wedge-shaped phalanx of wild ducks and the huge globe of soaring
storks are as remarkable as any.
I used to be much amused during past travels in watching the different
lines of search that were pursued by different persons in looking for
objects lost on the ground, when the encampment was being broken up.
Different persons had decided idiosyncracies, so much so that if their
travelling line of sight could have scored a mark on the ground, I think the
system of each person would have been as characteristic as his Number-
Form.
Children learn their figures to some extent by those on the clock. I
cannot, however, trace the influence of the clock on the Forms in more
than a few cases. In two of them the clock-face actually appears, in others
it has evidently had a strong influence, and in the rest its influence is
indicated, but nothing more. I suppose that the complex Roman numerals
in the clock do not fit in sufficiently well with the simpler ideas based
upon the Arabic ones.
The other traces of the origin of the Forms that appear here and there,
are dominoes, cards, counters, an abacus, the fingers, counting by coins,
feet and inches (a yellow carpenter’s rule appears in one case with 56 in
large figures upon it), the country surrounding the child’s home, with its
hills and dales, objects in the garden (one scientific man sees the old
garden walk and the numeral 7 at a tub sunk in the ground where his
father filled his watering-pot). Some associations seem connected with the
objects spoken of in the doggerel verses by which children are often
taught their numbers.
But the paramount influence proceeds from the names of the numerals.
Our nomenclature is perfectly barbarous, and that of other civilised
nations is not better than ours, and frequently worse, as the French
“quatre-vingt dix-huit,” or " four score, ten and eight,” instead of eighty-
eight. We speak of ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, etc., in defiance of the
beautiful system of decimal notation in which we write those numbers.
What we see is one-naught, one-one, one-two, etc., and we should
pronounce on that principle, with this proviso, that the word for the “one"
having to show both the place and the value, should have a sound
suggestive of “one” but not identical with it. Let us suppose it to be the
