Mr. MacLeay found that in his quinary groups one of each five contained genera or species related to other genera or species in each of the other four groups.
Subordinate to either one of these the quinary may and often does appear.
This leads the quinary into the vigesimal scale, and produces the combination so often found in certain parts of the world.
Quinary counting is not uncommon in the "Dark Continent," and there is no apparent reason why vigesimal reckoning should be any less common than quinary.
May not the changes of time have altered the compounds which were once a clear indication of quinary counting, until no trace remains by which they can be followed back to their true origin?
The foregoing examples will show with considerable fulness the wide dispersion of the quinary scale.
Below 20 it is quinary, and, however far it might be extended, this quinaryelement would remain, making the scale quinary-vigesimal.
In Africa, Oceanica, and parts of North America, the union is almost always with the decimal scale; while in other parts of the world the quinary and the vigesimal systems have shown a decided affinity for each other.
In its structure thequinary is the simplest, the most primitive, of the natural systems.
Thus the inevitable tendency of any number system of quinary origin is toward the establishment of another and larger base, and the formation of a number system in which both are used.
Above 20 the systems become vigesimal, with a quinary or decimal structure appearing in all numerals except multiples of 20.
But even then the universality of quinarycounting for primitive peoples is by no means established.
Turning first to the native African languages, I have selected the following quinary scales from the abundant material that has been collected by the various explorers of the "Dark Continent.
They divide into two great groups, into thequinary and sexanary.
Mostly shrubs with quinary corollæ and manifold stamina; capsule or berry multilocular--Melastomaceæ.
The germ of the seed or embryo, namely, radicle, cotyledons and plumule, is therefore only the quinary pinnate leaf without the spathe or testa.
The quaternary corolla is a quinary without the uneven leaflet.
If it originates from the quinary quantity, two pinnate leaflets are then coarrested.
The quinary division originates, when to the two pinnate leaflets two others are superadded.
Brown, discoverer of the quinary arrangement of flowers, ii.
The numerals are built upon the quinary system, the numeral system most frequent in North America.
The numerals follow the decimal, not the quinary system as they do in the Maskoki languages.
Footnote 59: Skulls may also be grouped by sections (for instance, ascending to the quinarynomenclature of the cephalic index) to see what is the proportional part of each of these sections.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "quinary" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
