of the inhabitants of the Punjab use the left hand by preference; and the greater number of the Hottentots and Bushmen of South Africa also use the left hand in preference to the right.” But such statements, to be of any value, must be based on carefully accumulated evidence, such as is scarcely accessible in relation to nomad savage tribes. Such comprehensive generalisations generally prove to have no better foundation than the exceptional and chance observations of a traveller. It is otherwise when the evidence is derived from language, or from the observation of traders or missionaries long resident among the people. Throughout the widely scattered islands of the Pacific the recognition of native right-handedness as the normal usage is confirmed alike by trustworthy witnesses and by the definite evidence of language. The Samoan word _lima_, hand, also signifying “five,” and the terms _lima maira_, right hand, and _lima woat_, left hand, are used as the equivalents of our own mode of expression. But also the left hand is _lima tau-anga-vale_, literally, the hand that takes hold foolishly. In the case of the Samoans, it may be added, as well as among the natives of New Britain and other of the Pacific islands, the favoured hand corresponds with our right hand. My informant, the Rev. George Brown, for fourteen years a missionary in Polynesia, states that the distinction of right and left hand is as marked as among Europeans; and left-handedness is altogether exceptional. In the Terawan language, which is spoken throughout the group of islands on the equator called the Kingsmill Archipelago, the terms _atai_ or _edai_, right, dexter, (entirely distinct from _rapa_, good, right,) and _maan_, left, sinister, are applied to _bai_, or _pai_, the hand, to denote the difference, _e.g._ _te bai maan_, the left hand, literally, the “dirty hand,” that which is not used in eating. The languages of the American continent furnish similar evidence of the recognition of the distinction among its hunter-tribes. In the Chippeway the word for “my right hand” is _ne-keche-neenj, e_ being the prenominal prefix, literally, “my great hand.” “My left hand” is _ne-nuh-munje-neenj-ne_. _Numunj_ is the same root as appears in _nuh-munj-e-doon_, “I do not know;” and the idea obviously is “the uncertain or unreliable hand.” Again, in the Mohawk language, “the right hand” is expressed by the term _ji-ke-we-yen-den-dah-kon_, from _ke-we-yen-deh_, literally, “I know how.” _Ji_ is a particle conveying the idea of _side_, and the termination _dah-kon_ has the meaning of “being accustomed to.” It is, therefore, the limb accustomed to act promptly, the dexterous organ. _Ske-ne-kwa-dih_, the left hand, literally means “the other side.”