the fight, hastily dipped up the water in their hand, and snatching a draught passed on. By these did Gideon, the son of Joash, discomfit the hosts of the Midianites. The number of the left-handed Benjamites does not furnish any evidence that this specialty was more prevalent among them than other tribes. But it is not difficult to conceive of some resolute combatant, endowed with the capacity of a leader, and conscious of his own skill in the use of his weapons in his dexterous left hand, banding together under his leadership a company selected on account of their manifesting the same exceptional dexterity. With this as the indispensable requisite, he was able to muster a body of seven hundred marksmen, all men of his own tribe, every one of whom was left-handed, and could sling stones at a hair’s-breadth and not miss. To the naturally left-handed man such dexterity is in no degree surprising. Among the instinctively left-handed, those with whom the bias is slight readily yield to the influence of example and education, and so pass over to the majority. Only those in whom the propensity is too strong to yield to such influences remain. They are, therefore, exceptionally dexterous with their left hand; and are thus not only distinguished from the equally expert right-handed, but are, still more, an exception to the large majority in whom the bias is so slight, and the dexterity so partial, that their practice is little more than a compliance with the usage of the majority. It is important to keep in view the fact that the relative numbers furnished by the narrative in the Book of Judges do not suggest that the tribe of Benjamin differed in the above respect from other tribes. Of twenty-six thousand Benjamites that drew the sword, there were the seven hundred left-handed slingers, or barely 2·7 per cent, which does not greatly differ from the proportion noted at the present time. In the song of triumph for the avenging of Israel over the Canaanites, in the same Book of Judges, the deed of vengeance by which Sisera, the captain of the host of Jabin, King of Canaan, perished by the hand of a woman, is thus celebrated: “She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera.” Here, as we see, while their deliverer from the oppression of the Moabites is noted as a Benjamite, a left-handed man; Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, is blessed above women, who with her right hand smote the enemy of God and her people. Along with those references may be noted one of a later date, recorded in the first Book of Chronicles. When David was in hiding from Saul at Ziklag there came to him a company of Saul’s brethren of Benjamin, mighty men, armed with bows, who could use both the right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow. These latter, it will be observed, are noted not as left-handed, but ambidextrous; but this is characteristic