Broad shoulders, muscular arms, a large head and a long neck, all tend to elevate the centre point; while the contrary result follows from width at the haunches and a great development of the lower limbs. The intermediate condition, in which the centre of gravity falls upon the transverse axis, with no instinctive tendency to call into action the muscles of the one side of the body in preference to those of the other, constitutes, according to Dr. Buchanan, the most happy conformation of the body. “It belongs,” he says, “more especially to the female sex. It is this that so often renders a young girl a perfect model of grace and agility. It is the same conformation that enables the ballet-dancer to whirl round on her one foot till the spectators are giddy with looking at her, when she completes her triumph by revolving with the same ease and grace on her other foot also.” He further adds: “If accurate statistics could be obtained, I believe it would be found that while a very great majority of males are right-handed, the proportion of females is less; and that, on the contrary, a larger proportion of females than of males are ambidextrous or left-handed.” Consistently with the ideas thus set forth, both Dr. Buchanan and Dr. Struthers regard right-handedness as an acquired habit, though under the influence and control of the mechanical forces indicated by them. “As the question,” says the latter, “in so far as it can bear on the cause of the preference of the right hand, must turn on the weight and position of the viscera in the child at the period when the predominance of the right hand is being gradually developed, in the second and third years, and afterwards, it is necessary to make the calculation from the facts as presented in children.” In a letter to myself he thus writes: “I have again and again verified the fact in my own children, that in early childhood there is no preference for one hand more than the other.” But this, as has been already shown, may be partly due to modes of nursing and other temporary causes affecting the child in its first infantile stage; and though it may undoubtedly be affirmed of many, if not indeed of the majority, of children at that stage: a certain number will be found to manifest a distinct preference, at a very early age, for one or the other hand. In the case of a niece of my own, the left-handedness showed itself very soon; and in my grandson it was independently observed by his mother and nurse, and brought under my notice, that so soon as he was able to grasp an object and transfer it from one hand to the other, he gave the preference to the left hand. A like decided preference for the right hand, though doubtless also comparatively rare, is more frequent; and the farther research is carried, the more manifest does it appear that--whatever be the originating cause,--the preferential use of what we designate the right hand is instinctive with a