Sometimes when counting a number of objects the Maoris would put aside 1 to represent each 10, and then those so set aside would afterward be counted to ascertain the number of tens in the heap.

Early observers among this people, seeing them count 10 and then set aside 1, at the same time pronouncing the word _tekau_, imagined that this word meant 11, and that the ignorant savage was making use of this number as his base.

This misconception found its way into the early New Zealand dictionary, but was corrected in later editions.

It is here mentioned only because of the wide diffusion of the error, and the interest it has always excited.[217] Aside from our common decimal scale, there exist in the English language other methods of counting, some of them formal enough to be dignified by the term _system_--as the sexagesimal method of measuring time and angular magnitude; and the duodecimal system of reckoning, so extensively used in buying and selling.

Of these systems, other than decimal, two are noticed by Tylor,[218] and commented on at some length, as follows: "One is the well-known dicing set, _ace_, _deuce_, _tray_, _cater_, _cinque_, _size_; thus _size-ace_ is 6-1, _cinques_ or _sinks_, double 5.
These came to us from France, and correspond with the common French numerals, except _ace_, which is Latin _as_, a word of great philological interest, meaning 'one.' The other borrowed set is to be found in the _Slang Dictionary_.