saw it so clearly as this morning while out walking, unslept and dreary enough in the windy sunshine. How old? Old! I wonder if there is any people barbarous enough not to have this distinction of hands; no human Cosmos possible to be even begun without it. Oldest Hebrews, etc., writing from right to left, are as familiar with the world-old institution as we. Why that particular hand was chosen is a question not to be settled, not worth asking except as a kind of riddle; probably arose in fighting; most important to protect your heart and its adjacencies, and to carry the shield on that hand.” This idea of the left hand being preoccupied with the shield, and so leaving to the other the active functions of the sword and spear hand, is familiar to the classical student, and will fitly come under review at a later stage. Nor can such secondary influences be overlooked. Whatever may prove to be the primary source of right-handedness, it cannot be doubted that, when thoroughly developed and systematically recognised as determining the character of many combined operations, the tendency would inevitably be to foster the preferential use of the right hand even in indifferent actions. Two causes have thus to be recognised as operating in the development of right-handedness, and begetting certain differences in its manifestation under varying social influences. There is a progressive scale, from the imperfect to the more perfectly developed, and then to the perfectly educated hand: all steps in its adaptation to the higher purposes of the manipulator. The hand of the rude savage, of the sailor, the miner, or blacksmith, while well fitted for the work to which it is applied, is a very different instrument from that of the chaser, engraver, or cameo-cutter; of the musician, painter, or sculptor. This difference is unquestionably a result of development, whatever the other may be; for, as we have in the ascending scale the civilised and educated man, so also we have the educated hand as one of the most characteristic features of civilisation. But here attention is at once called to the distinctive preference of the right hand, whether as the natural use of this more perfect organ of manipulation, or as an acquired result of civilisation. The phenomenon to be explained is not merely why each individual uses one hand rather than another. Experience abundantly accounts for this. But if it can be shown that all nations, civilised and savage, appear to have used the same hand, it is vain to look for the origin of this as an acquired habit. Only by referring it to some anatomical cause can its general prevalence, among all races and in every age, be satisfactorily accounted for. Nevertheless this simple phenomenon, cognisant to the experience of all, and brought under constant notice in our daily intercourse with others, long baffled the physiologist in his search for a satisfactory explanation.