640 Si?' James Crkhton-Broivne [May 3, 



argue that the emergence of its right-handedness is due to the use of 

 the hands. 



Then right-handedness is unquestionably congenital and innate, 

 and not acquired in any way, as Buchanan would have it. As I have 

 before said, it is impossible to conceive that a habit of such universality 

 is not bred in the bone. Had it not been vested in human nature, 

 we should have had left-handed tribes and races, and the study of the 

 exceptions to it reveals its hereditary nature. Left-handedness runs 

 in families. Professor Cunnyngham has quoted the case of a sailor who 

 was left-handed, who had a left-handed mother and seven brothers and 

 six sisters all left-handed, and in whose family there were 25 instances 

 in all of this variation, with a certain number of right-handed 

 specimens. The tribe of Benjamin with its 700 chosen men, left- 

 handed, every one of whom could shng stones at a hair's breadth and 

 not miss — and by the way, I see that with consummate audacity 

 these 700 are claimed by a recent ambidextral scribe as having been 

 of that cult, although it is expressly said they were left-handed — the 

 tribe of Benjamin does not, as has been supposed, afford an instance 

 of hereditary left-handedness, for the 700 were chosen men out of 

 26,000 Benjamites who drew the sword, which gives barely 2'7 per 

 cent, of left-handed men, not above the proportion at the present 

 time ; and, curiously enough, the name of the tribe, Benjamin, means 

 right-handed. But there have been families and clans in which the 

 proportion of left-handed persons has been excessive, and in which 

 the inheritance of that condition from one generation to another has 

 been well marked. In Scotland the left-handed man is said to be 

 " kerry-handed," and the tradition is that the term is derived from a 

 Dabraida king, Krynach Ker, and that members of the Ker family in 

 all its ramifications are very liable to exhibit left-handedness. The 

 Ettrick Shepherd wrote, no doubt verifying a current belief : — 



"But the Kers were aye the deadliest faes, 

 That e'er to Englishmen were known, 

 For they were all bred left-handed men, 

 And fence against them there was none." 



Sir Lauder Brunton tells me that left-handedness is still more 

 than usually common in the Kers' country near Galashiels. 



But if left-handedness is hereditary, a fortiori right-handedness 

 must be so ; and Dr. Buchanan's derivation of it from the inclination 

 given by body weight must be abandoned. But a more serious and, 

 indeed, fatal objection to his hypothesis has arisen. Since he 

 j)ropounded it a considerable number of cases have been observed in 

 which there has been transposition of the viscera without any trans- 

 position of manual dexterity. In these curious cases, occasionally 

 encountered, the heart is on the right side, the liver on the left, and 

 all the internal organs are shifted from one side to the other and the 

 centre of gravity is therefore to the left of the mesial line. Now, if 

 Dr. Buchanan was right, the mechanical advantage being on the left 



