[Read before the Auckland Institute, 3rd October, 1906.]

Maori numeration is a subject which appears to have received little attention from writers who have dealt with the customs of the Native race, and of what has been placed on record a certain proportion thereof is certainly erroneous and misleading. The following notes, albeit somewhat brief and incomplete, will serve to give the reader some idea of the system of numeration which obtained among the Tuhoe Tribe of Maoris prior to the arrival of Europeans in New Zealand.

There were, in former times, two different methods of numeration in use among the Maori people, single and binary. Some profess to see in the dual system a primitive method of enumeration which obtained in times long past, before the arrival of the race in Polynesia. From information obtained in this district of Tuhoeland, it would appear that the binary system was used in counting game, &c.: that is to say, such items were counted, or tallied, in pairs—hence the term used (topu) in this method is equivalent to our word “brace.”

The systems of numeration of primitive peoples are often quoted by anthropologists as a sign of the grade of culture to which such peoples have attained. Thus we read of tribes of so low a culture as to have no system of counting beyond five, or even three. It will be seen that the Maori, a barbarous people, had evolved, or borrowed, a very good system of numeration, and doubtless quite elaborate enough for their purposes. Some writers have stated that the Natives of New Zealand did not count above one hundred, any number above that not being counted with precision, but simply styled as “numberless,” or “a great many,” “a multitude.” It does not, however, appear to have been so, although it is probable that the statement given would be correct if applied to thousands instead of hundreds. Albeit the term mano has been used to define “a thousand” in modern times—i.e., since European settlement in these isles—yet it is not clear that it was so used in ancient times. I am inclined to think that the word mano may have been originally used as the term tini is at the present time—viz., to imply a great number, a multitude. The Ngati-Kahungunu Tribe have an expression—mano tini ngeangea—which is used to denote a great number. It appears