where to begin.  In one school room where this experiment was tried the teacher incautiously asked one child to count on his fingers, while all the other children in the room watched eagerly to see what he would do.  He began with the little finger—­and so did every child in the room after him.  In another case the same error was made by the teacher, and the child first asked began with the thumb.  Every other child in the room did the same, each following, consciously or unconsciously, the example of the leader.  The results from these two schools were of course rejected from the totals which are given above; but they serve an excellent purpose in showing how slight is the preference which very young children have in this particular.  So slight is it that no definite law can be postulated of this age; but the tendency seems to be to hold the palm of the hand downward, and then begin with the thumb.  The writer once saw a boy about seven years old trying to multiply 3 by 6; and his method of procedure was as follows:  holding his left hand with its palm down, he touched with the forefinger of his right hand the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger successively of his left hand.  Then returning to his starting-point, he told off a second three in the same manner.  This process he continued until he had obtained 6 threes, and then he announced his result correctly.  If he had been a few years older, he might not have turned so readily to his thumb as a starting-point for any digital count.  The indifference manifested by very young children gradually disappears, and at the age of twelve or thirteen the tendency is decidedly in the direction of beginning with the little finger.  Fully three-fourths of all persons above that age will be found to count from the little finger toward the thumb, thus reversing the proportion that was found to obtain in the primary school rooms examined.

With respect to finger counting among civilized peoples, we fail, then, to find any universal law; the most that can be said is that more begin with the little finger than with the thumb.  But when we proceed to the study of this slight but important particular among savages, we find them employing a certain order of succession with such substantial uniformity that the conclusion is inevitable that there must lie back of this some well-defined reason, or perhaps instinct, which guides them in their choice.  This instinct is undoubtedly the outgrowth of the almost universal right-handedness of the human race.  In finger counting, whether among children or adults, the beginning is made on the left hand, except in the case of left-handed individuals; and even then the start is almost as likely to be on the left hand as on the right.  Savage tribes, as might be expected, begin with the left hand.  Not only is this custom almost invariable, when tribes as a whole are considered, but the little finger is nearly always called into requisition first.  To account for this uniformity, Lieutenant Gushing