The buyer or seller will by this method express 6 or 60 by stretching out the thumb and little finger and closing the rest of the fingers.

The addition of the fourth finger to the two thus used signifies 7 or 70; and so on.

"It is said that between two brokers settling a price by thus snipping with the fingers, cleverness in bargaining, offering a little more, hesitating, expressing an obstinate refusal to go further, etc., are as clearly indicated as though the bargaining were being carried on in words.
The place occupied, in the intellectual development of man, by finger counting and by the many other artificial methods of reckoning,--pebbles, shells, knots, the abacus, etc.,--seems to be this: The abstract processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and even counting itself, present to the mind a certain degree of difficulty.

To assist in overcoming that difficulty, these artificial aids are called in; and, among savages of a low degree of development, like the Australians, they make counting possible.

A little higher in the intellectual scale, among the American Indians, for example, they are employed merely as an artificial aid to what could be done by mental effort alone.