18 DANIEL WILSON ON THE RIGHT 
all the intermediate ages, securely sealed up in the cave breccia, we have illustrations of 
the hand-usage of primitive times of profounder significance than any that the monuments 
of Assyria or Egypt supply. Among those there are undoubted left-handed drawings ; 
and above all a remarkably skilful and spirited sketch of a reindeer grazing, recovered 
from a cave at Thayngen, in the Kesserloch, Schaffhausen. The examples of the art of 
the Paleolithic draftsmen thus far recovered are too few in number to admit of any 
general conclusion as to the relative use of the right or left hand among the primitive 
cave men. There is, indeed, among them a larger percentage of left-handed draftsmen 
than would ordinarily be looked for as exceptional deviations from the normal practise 
among a right-handed people. But, without attempting to deduce any statistical results 
of general application from such narrow premises, the evidence is distinctly in favour of 
primitive right-handedness. 
So far, then, it seems to be proved that not only among cultured and civilised races, 
but among the barbarous tribes of both hemispheres—in Australia, Polynesia, among the 
Arctic tribes of our northern hemisphere at the present day, and among the Palzeolithic 
men of Europe’s Post-Pliocene times,—not only has a habitual preference been manifested 
for the use of one hand rather than the other, but among all alike the same hand has 
been preferred. Yet, also, it is no less noteworthy that this prevailing uniformity of prac- 
tice has always been accompanied by some very pronounced exceptions. Not only are 
cases of exceptional facility in the use of both hands of frequent occurrence ; but while 
right-handedness everywhere predominates, left-handedness is nowhere unknown. The 
skill of the combatant in hitting with both hands is indeed a favourite topic of poetic 
laudation, though this is characteristic of every well-trained boxer. In the combat 
between Entellus and Dares (Ain. v. 456), the passionate Entellus strikes, now with his 
right hand, and again with his left :— | 
“ Præcipitemque Daren ardens agit æquore toto, 
Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille sinistra.” 
But the more general duty of the left hand is as the guard, or the shield-bearer, as where 
Æneas gives the signal to his comrades, in sight of the Trojans (Æn. x. 261)— 
“Stans celsa in puppi; clipeum cum deinde sinistra 
Extulit ardentem.” 
The right hand may be said to express all active volition and all beneficent action, as 
in Ain. vi. 370, “ Da dextram misero,” “ Give thy right hand to the wretched,” 7. e., give him 
aid ; and so in many other examples, all indicative of right-handedness as the rule. The 
only exception I have been able to discover occurs in a curious passage in the “ Eclogues” 
of Stobæus Jlep? puyns, in a dialogue between Horus and Isis, where, after describing a 
variety of races of men, and their peculiarities, it thus proceeds: “ An indication of this 
is found in the circumstance that southern races, that is those who dwell on the earth’s 
summit, have fine heads and good hair; eastern races are prompt to battle, and skilled in 
archery for the right hand is the seat of these qualities. Western races are cautious, and 
for the most part left-handed ; and whilst the activity which other men display belongs 
to their right side, these races favour the left.” Stobæus, the Macedonian, belongs, at 
