The customs and modes of life of these people are not such as to require the use of any save the scanty list of numbers given above; and their mental poverty prompts them to call 3, the first number above a single pair, 2-1.
In the same way, 4 and 6 are respectively 2 pairs and 3 pairs, while 5 is 1 more than 2 pairs.

Five objects, however, they sometimes denote by _urapuni-getal_, 1 hand.

A precisely similar condition is found to prevail respecting the arithmetic of all the Australian tribes.

In some cases only two numerals are found, and in others three.

But in a very great number of the native languages of that continent the count proceeds by pairs, if indeed it proceeds at all.