_Race._—We have not yet obtained sufficient data to enable us to ascertain any thing very definite respecting this part of our subject. Whether the hand of races springing from the Caucasian stock presents a form essentially different from that of people originating from the Mongolian,—whether the hand of the Negro races resembles or differs from that of the American tribes, must be determined by the future investigations of intelligent and observing travellers. From the few observations that have hitherto been made, it would appear that in the American and Mongolian races the hand is characterised by a preponderance of the motive element over the sensitive, the member being large and coarse, with the bones, muscles, and joints, strongly developed. As regards the dark-coloured races we know that they differ somewhat from the white in the texture of their skin: it is coarse in its structure, provided with a larger number of sebaceous glands, and covered by a thicker layer of cuticle, so that the sentient terminations of the nerves being less exposed its general sensibility must be considerably less than that of the skin of white people. But the hand not only affords us characters by which the age and sex may be determined, it is likewise an index of the general habit of body, of the kind of temperament, and of the mental tendency and disposition. HAND, INDEX OF HABIT OF BODY AND TEMPERAMENT. The general habit of body, and the kind of temperament, we determine from certain general signs deduced from the hand. We observe the structure of the skin—whether it be fine or coarse in its texture, whether it be hard and unyielding, or soft and elastic. We note the quantity of fat and of cellular tissue; and this enables us to form a judgment respecting the degree of _embonpoint_, and we have already abundantly proved that a man of a soft, lax habit, with an abundance of cellular and fatty tissues, differs in mental tendency and disposition from one of firm, tense fibre, in whom the bones, muscles, and articulations, are strong and prominent. Thus, a soft, thick hand, loaded with fat, denotes little energy of character, and a soft, yielding, inactive disposition; while, on the contrary, a thin, firm, bony, or muscular hand indicates a rough, active, energetic nature. With respect to the texture of the skin—a hand possessing a delicate and highly-sensitive skin is accompanied by a similar structure of the tegumentary envelope of the entire body, and is always associated with an excitable organisation, with a highly sensitive, mobile disposition. A coarse, dry texture of the skin denotes a preponderance of muscular force over sensibility, and a character more remarkable for solidity and resolution than for imagination or vivacity of conception. The hand partakes of the nature of the whole body; when the latter is gracefully and symmetrically formed, with its several parts in nice adaptation and co-ordination, the former shares its perfection and is