John, whom you address here, can tell you exactly whether he may, or may not, marry Mary Anne over there; also he can point out his mother, and tell you her name, and the names of his brothers and sisters.

You work round the whole group--it very possibly contains no more than a few hundred members at most--and interrogate them one and all about their relationships to this and that individual whom you name.

In course of time you have a scheme which you can treat in your own analytic way to your heart's content; whilst against your system of reckoning affinity you can set up by way of contrast the native system; which can always be obtained by asking each informant what relationship-terms he would apply to the different members of his pedigree, and, reciprocally, what terms they would each apply to him.
* * * * * Before closing this altogether inadequate sketch of a vast and intricate subject, I would say just one word about the expression of ideas of number.

It is quite a mistake to suppose that savages have no sense of number, because the simple-minded European traveller, compiling a short vocabulary in the usual way, can get no equivalent for our numerals, say from 5 to 10.

The fact is that the numerical interest has taken a different turn, incorporating itself with other interests of a more concrete kind in linguistic forms to which our own type of language affords no key at all.