constructed after the same general plan; and we accordingly find that a powerful, athletic individual is furnished with a large hard hand, with its joints or articulations strong and prominent, and a delicate, sensitive person, with a small, narrow hand, with its joints small and but slightly prominent. HAND, FOUR PRIMARY FORMS OF, CONNECTED WITH PARTICULAR MENTAL TENDENCIES. In order correctly to determine the more particular signs of the mental disposition which may be drawn from an examination of the hand, we must first take into consideration the special physiological functions of the organ. On the one hand, it is the most delicate instrument of feeling,—the organ of touch, by means of which we judge of so many properties of bodies; on the other hand, the finest and most skilful instrument of motion and of prehension; and it may likewise be regarded as the organ of art. A hand rather below the average size, and of which the skin is soft and delicate, the fingers long, and provided with numerous cuticular ridges, which are indicative of a large number of the sentient papillæ of touch, the bony portion but slightly developed, and the joints not prominent, is admirably adapted for an organ of sensation, but by no means suited for an instrument of motion; while, on the contrary, a size rather above the average, together with a massive, bony, framework, strong muscles and tendons, and large joints, are the characteristics of a powerful instrument of prehension—of a hand in which sensation is sacrificed to motion. In the former case, we may with certainty predicate a mind mobile, imaginative, and inclined to abstraction,—a mind employed chiefly on subjective phenomena; in the latter, the mind is rather objective in its action than subjective, operating powerfully upon the external world, whether by arms, agriculture, or the mechanical arts: the former hand we term sensitive, the latter motive.