erience; and in this view he is heartily
supported by Tylor.[3] But why this question should provoke controversy, it
is difficult for the mathematician to understand. Either view would seem to
be correct, according to the standpoint from which the question is
approached. We know of no language in which the suggestion of number does
not appear, and we must admit that the words which give expression to the
number sense would be among the early words to be formed in any language.
They express ideas which are, at first, wholly concrete, which are of the
greatest possible simplicity, and which seem in many ways to be clearly
understood, even by the higher orders of the brute creation. The origin of
number would in itself, then, appear to lie beyond the proper limits of
inquiry; and the primitive conception of number to be fundamental with
human thought.

In connection with the assertion that the idea of number seems to be
understood by the higher orders of animals, the following brief quotation
from a paper by Sir John Lubbock may not be out of place: "Leroy ...
mentions a case in which a man was anxious to shoot a crow. 'To deceive
this suspicious bird, the plan was hit upon of sending two men to the watch
house, one of whom passed on, while the other remained; but the crow
counted and kept her distance. The next day three went, and again she
perceived that only two retired. In fine, it was found necessary to send
five or six men to the watch house to put her out in her calculation. The
crow, thinking that this number of men had passed by, lost no time in
returning.' From this he inferred that crows could count up to four.
Lichtenberg mentions a nightingale which was said to count up to three.
Every day he gave it three mealworms, one at a time. When it had finished
one it returned for another, but after the third it knew that the feast was
over.... There is an amusing and suggestive remark in Mr. Galton's
interesting _Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa_. After
describing the Demara's weakness in calculations, he says: 'Once while I
watched a Demara floundering hopelessly in a calculation on one side of me,
I observed, "Dinah," my spaniel, equally embarrassed on the other; she was
overlooking half a dozen of her new-born puppies, which had been removed
two or three times from her, and her anxiety was excessive, as she tried to
find out if they were all present, or if any were still missing. She kept
puzzling a