An old English nursery rhyme makes use of this association, only in a manner precisely the reverse of that which appears now and then in numeral terms.
In the latter case the process is always one of enlargement, and the associative word is "great." In the following rhyme, constructed by the mature for the amusement of the childish mind, the process is one of diminution, and the associative word is "little": One's none, Two's some, Three's a many, Four's a penny, Five's a little hundred.[125] Any real numeral formation by the use of "little," with the name of some higher unit, would, of course, be impossible.

The numeral scale must be complete before the nursery rhyme can be manufactured.
It is not to be supposed from the observations that have been made on the formation of savage numeral scales that all, or even the majority of tribes, proceed in the awkward and faltering manner indicated by many of the examples quoted.

Some of the North American Indian tribes have numeral scales which are, as far as they go, as regular and almost as simple as our own.

But where digital numeration is extensively resorted to, the expressions for higher numbers are likely to become complex, and to act as a real bar to the extension of the system.

The same thing is true, to an even greater degree, of tribes whose number sense is so defective that they begin almost from the outset to use combinations.