It has been already shown that in languages of the American continent, as in those of the Algonquins and the Iroquois, the recognition of the distinction between the right and left hand is apparent; and on turning to the monuments of a native American civilisation, evidence similar to that derived from the sculptures of Egypt and Assyria serves to show that the same hand had the preference in the New World as in the Old. In the Palenque hieroglyphics of Central America, for example, in which human and animal heads frequently occur among the sculptured characters, it is noticeable that they invariably look towards the left, indicating, as it appears to me, that they are the graven inscriptions of a lettered people who were accustomed to write the same characters from left to right on paper or skins. Indeed, the pictorial groups on the Copan statues seem to be the true hieroglyphic characters; while the Palenque inscriptions correspond to the abbreviated hieratic writing. The direction of the profile was a matter of no moment to the sculptor, but if the scribe held his pen or style in his right hand, like the modern clerk, he would as naturally draw the left profile as the penman slopes his current hand to the right. In the pictorial hieroglyphics, reproduced in Lord Kingsborough’s _Mexican Antiquities_, as in other illustrations of the arts of Mexico and Central America, it is also apparent that the battle-axe and other weapons and implements are most frequently held in the right hand. But to this exceptions occur; and it is obvious that there also the crude perspective of the artist influenced the disposition of the tools, or weapons, according to the action designed to be represented, and the direction in which the actor looked. Such are some of the indications which seem to point to a uniform usage, in so far as we can recover evidence of the practice among ancient nations; while far behind their most venerable records lie the chronicles of palæolithic ages: of the men of the drift and of the caves of Europe’s prehistoric dawn.