which depends on the memory of successive sounds, and of the method of reproducing such imitation of them as a parrot’s powers permit; and it is remarkable that their left brain receives more blood and is better developed than the right brain.” The same writer expresses his doubt as to monkeys showing any tendency to right-handedness; but with the constant use and training of the hands by the Quadrumana in their arboreal life, opportunities for the manifestation of any instinctive preference for either hand must be rare; and is likely to elude all but the most watchful observers. A paper was communicated by Dr. Delaunay to the Anthropological Society of France, on the subject of right-handedness. I only know of it by an imperfect notice, in which he is reported to look on the preferential use of the right hand as a differentiation arising from natural selection, while he regards ambidexterity as a mere “survival.” But Dr. Pye-Smith long ago remarked that “it is clear that in the progress of civilisation one or other hand would come to be selected for the more characteristic human actions for which only one is necessary, such as wielding a pen or other weapon;” but he recognises the insufficiency of the suggestion, and adds in a footnote: “The difficult point is to guess by what process the right rather than the left hand has been so universally preferred.” He then glances at possible guidance to be derived from the study of the habits of savage tribes, though still the old difficulty recurs; and he thus proceeds: “In default of any better suggestion, might one suggest an hypothesis of the origin of right-handedness from modes of fighting, more by way of illustration than as at all adequate in itself? If a hundred of our ambidextrous ancestors made the step in civilisation of inventing a shield, we may suppose that half would carry it on the right arm and fight with the left, the other half on the left and fight with the right. The latter would certainly, in the long run, escape mortal wounds better than the former, and thus a race of men who fought with the right hand would gradually be developed by a process of natural selection.” The recognition of the shield-hand, and the passive functions assigned to it, has already been referred to as one familiar to the ancient Greek and Roman, and no doubt to other and earlier nations. But here it is diverted to the service of one of the latest aspects of evolutionary development, and becomes the begetter instead of the product of left-handedness. To this idea of right-handedness as one of the results of a survival of the fittest, Dr. Delaunay adds the statement, professedly based on facts which he has accumulated, that ambidexterity is common among idiots. The results noted probably amount to no more than the negative condition of general imbecility, in which the so-called ambidexterity of the idiot involves, not an exceptional skill in the left hand, equalising it with the right, but