induced the Quebec Golf Club, when ordering spare sets of implements for the use of occasional guests from Great Britain, to consider the propriety of providing a left-handed set. In the discussion to which the proposal gave rise, it was urged to be unnecessary, as a left-handed player generally has his own clubs with him; but finally the order was limited to two left-handed drivers, so that when a left-handed golfer joins them he has to put with his driver. This considerateness of the Quebec golfers was no doubt stimulated by the fact that there is a skilled golfer of the Montreal Club whose feats of dexterity as a left-handed player at times startle them. A Quebec golfer writes to me thus: “There is one left-handed fellow belonging to the Montreal Club who comes down occasionally to challenge us; and I have watched his queer play with a good deal of interest and astonishment.” To the left-handed man his right hand is the less ready, the less dexterous, and the weaker member. But in all ordinary experience the idea of weakness, uncertainty, unreliability, attaches to the left hand, and so naturally leads to the tropical significance of “unreliable, untrustworthy,” in a moral sense. Both ideas are found alike in barbarous and classic language. An interesting example of the former occurs in Ovid’s _Fasti_ (iii. 869), where the poet speaks of the flight of Helle and her brother on the golden-fleeced ram; and describes her as grasping its horn “with her feeble left hand, when she made of herself a name for the waters,” _i.e._ by falling off and being drowned-- Utque fugam capiant, aries nitidissimus auro Traditur. Ille vehit per freta longa duos. Dicitur informa cornu tenuisse sinistra Femina, cum de se nomina fecit aquæ. In the depreciatory moral sense, Plautus in the _Persa_, (II. ii. 44) calls the left hand _furtifica_, “thievish.” “Estne hæc manus? Ubi illa altera est furtifica læva?” So in like manner the term in all its forms acquires a depreciatory significance, and is even applied to sinister looks. So far, then, as the evidence of language goes, the distinction of the right from the left hand, as the more reliable member, appears to be coeval with the earliest known use of language. CHAPTER VI THE PRIMITIVE ABACUS