Heaven . Balance . Water . . Earthquake Wood . . Sacrifice. Boundary . Earth . .
(C. Gardner, _Journal Ethnological Society_, 1870, vol. ii. p. 5)]
Another Chinese legend says that "the most ancient forms were five hundred and forty characters, formed by a combination of knotted strings and the eight symbols, made in the form of birds' claws in various states of tension, and that all these five hundred and forty characters were suggested to the inventor by the marks (left by the claws) upon the sand." The use of looped or knotted cords is depicted in Egyptian hieroglyph, and among other tribes of the African continent the Jebus of to-day evidence the survival of this primitive _memoria technica_, while from Melanesia to Formosa the knotted cord, as in Australia and Africa the message-stick, render service as means of communication between man and his fellows. The nine incisions, with a longer cut across them to denote ten, is a mode of decimal reckoning and of record found alike among Red Indians and London bargees. The same purpose explains the custom, in force well within the present century, of our Exchequer in keeping certain accounts by means of notched tallies. The tally was a squared stick of well-seasoned hazel or willow, in one side of which notches of different breadth, indicating pounds, shillings, and pence, were cut to mark the amount of money lent by any person to the Government, the same amount being cut in Roman numerals, together with the lender's name and date of the loan, on the two opposite sides. The stick was then split down the middle, and one half handed to the lender, the other half being kept in the Exchequer. When the money fell due, the lender surrendered his half for comparison with its fellow, and the two being found to "tally," the loan was repaid. It was through the overheating of stoves in the burning of heaps of accumulated tally-sticks that the Houses of Parliament were destroyed in 1834. Fifty years ago in Scotland (and the like may happen in out-of-the-way hamlets to-day), the baker's boy took a "nick-stick" with his bread, and made a notch in the stick for every loaf he left on his rounds. So it was, Dr. Hoffman tells us, with the Pennsylvanian dairyman, who kept account of the milk which he sold by marking notches for pints and quarts on a stick. As these notches correspond to entries of transactions in our daybooks and ledgers, so the once widely-used Clog Almanack corresponded to our modern _Whitaker_. It consisted of a square-shaped "clog" or "block" of wood (sometimes of metal), and was designed chiefly to show when the Sundays and holidays fell, certain symbols or hieroglyphs being drawn against saint and other festal days--as, for example, an axe for Saint Paul, a true-lovers' knot for Saint Valentine, and a harp for Saint David. With this may be compared the hieroglyphic wheels named "record of the gods," formerly in use for recording time among the Indians of Virginia. "These wheels had sixty spokes, each for a year, as if to mark the ordinary age of man, and they were painted on skins kept by the priests. They marked on each spoke or division a hieroglyphic figure to show the memorable events of the year." (Tylor, p. 93.)