SCIENTIFIC PALMISTRY. 



41 



SCIENTIFIC PALMISTRY. 



By Professor HARRIS HAWTHORNE WILDER, Ph.D., 



SMITH COLLEGE. 



T3 ISING- from the waters of Kejemkoojic Lake in Nova Scotia there 

 -*-* stands a series of smooth slaty rocks which appear to one 

 approaching in a canoe so tempting a surface for the scratching of 

 inscriptions that they are completely covered, as far up as one can read, 

 with pictures, names, dates and meaningless scrawls, superimposed upon 

 one another and successively the work of the aboriginal Micmac Indians, 

 the French and the English. The oldest of these are undoubtedly pre- 

 columbian, while at the present day additions are continually being 

 made by vandalistic excursionists. 



In spite of the superposition of these varied scrawls, Col. Garrick 

 Mallory, who has made them the subject of special study, was able to 

 separate the genuine Micmac inscriptions from the others and has 

 published many of these in the United States Eeports of the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology. Among those he found the accompanying 

 figure of the palmar surface of a 

 human hand (Fig. 1)* which 

 shows a remarkable degree of de- 

 tail and must have been the result 

 of an unusually careful observa- 

 tion. The figure will be better 

 appreciated, perhaps, if the read- 

 er will first scrutinize the palmar 

 surface of his own left hand in a 

 strong light and compare it with 

 his other hand and with the hands 

 of two or three of his friends. 

 It will be noticed, first, that the 

 surface in question is marked by 

 two distinct sets of markings ; 



, T-1P FlG - l - I NDIAN Petroglyph from the Ke- 



nrst, the wrinkles, which form JE mkoojic rocks, nova scotia, one half the 

 the chief consideration of that SIZE 0F THE original drawing, after mal- 



means of amusement known as 



'palmistry' and which are caused by the movements of the fingers 

 and their muscles, and secondly the papillary ridges, which form 

 the fundamental sculpture of the skin and run in approximately 

 parallel directions across both the palm and the palmar surface of 

 * Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 740, Pig. 1255. 



