Professor Hyrtl of Vienna affirms its prevalence among the civilised races of Europe in the ratio of only two per cent; and the number of the old Benjamite left-handed slingers, as distinguished from other members of the band of twenty-six thousand warriors, did not greatly exceed this. In the ruder conditions of society, where combined action is rare, and social habits are less binding, a larger number of exceptions to the prevailing usage may be looked for; as the tendency of a high civilisation must be to diminish its manifestation. But education is powerless to eradicate it where it is strongly manifested in early life. My attention has been long familiarly directed to it from being myself naturally left-handed; and the experience of considerably more than half a century enables me to controvert the common belief, on which Dr. Humphry founds the deduction that the superiority of the right hand is not congenital, but acquired, viz. that “the left hand may be trained to as great expertness and strength as the right.” On the contrary, my experience accords with that of others in whom inveterate left-handedness exists, in showing the education of a lifetime contending with only partial success to overcome an instinctive natural preference. The result has been, as in all similar cases, to make me ambidextrous, yet not strictly speaking ambidexterous. The importance of this in reference to the question of the source of right-handedness is obvious. Mr. James Shaw, by whom the subject has been brought under the notice of the British Association and the Anthropological Institute, remarks in a communication to the latter: “Left-handedness is very mysterious. It seems to set itself quite against physiological deductions, and the whole tendency of art and fashion.” Dr. John Evans, when commenting on this, and on another paper on “Left-handedness” by Dr. Muirhead, expressed his belief that “the habit of using the left hand in preference to the right, though possibly to some extent connected with the greater supply of blood to one side than the other, is more often the result of the manner in which the individual has been carried in infancy.” This reason has been frequently suggested; but if there were any force in it, the results to be looked for would rather be an alternation of hands from generation to generation. The nurse naturally carries the child on the left arm, with its right side toward her breast. All objects presented to it are thus offered to the free left hand; and it is accordingly no uncommon remark that all children are at first left-handed. If their training while in the nurse’s arms could determine the habit, such is its undoubted tendency; but if so, the left-handed nurses of the next generation would reverse the process.