HAND AND LEFTHANDEDNESS. Bi 
that he would be no less put out by the sudden reversal of the door-handle, knife-blade, 
or screw, or the transposition of the buttons on his dress, than the right-handed man. 
Habit is constantly mistaken for nature. The laws of the road, for example, so univer- 
sally recognised in England, have become to all as it were a second nature ; and, as the 
old rhyme says :— 
“Tf you go to the left, you are sure to go right ; 
If you go to the right, you go wrong.” 
But throughout Canada and the United States, the reverse is the law ; and the new im- 
migrant, adhering to the usage of the mother country, is sorely perplexed by the persis- 
tent wrong-headedness, as it seems, of everyone but himself. 
Yet the predominant practice does impress itself on some few implements in a way 
sufficiently marked to remind the left-handed operator that he is transgressing normal 
usage. The candle, “our peculiar and household planet !” as Charles Lamb designates it, 
has well nigh become a thing of the past ; but in the old days of candle-light the snuffers 
were among the most unmanageable of domestic implements to a left-handed man. They 
are so peculiarly adapted to the right hand that the impediment can only be overcome by 
the dextrous shift of inserting the left thumb and finger below instead of above. As to 
the right-handed adaptation of scissors, it is admitted by others, but I am unconscious of 
any difficulty that their alteration would remove. “He that has seen three mowers at 
work,” says Carlyle, “ one of whom is left-handed, trying to work together, and how im- 
possible it is, has witnessed the simplest form of an impossibility, which but for the dis- 
tinction of a ‘ right hand,’ would have pervaded all human things.” But, although the 
mower’s scythe must be used in a direction in which the left hand is placed at some dis- 
advantage—and a left-handed race of mowers would undoubtedly reverse the seythe— 
yet even in this the chief impediment is to cooperation. The difficulty to himself is soon 
overcome. It is his fellow workers who are troubled by his operations. Like the 
handling of the oar or still more the paddle of a canoe, or the use of the musket or rifle,— 
so obviously designed for a right-handed marksman,—the difficulty is soon overcome. It 
is not uncommon to find a left-handed soldier placed on the left of his company when 
firing. The writer’s own experience in drilling as a volunteer was that, after a little prac- 
tice, he had no difficulty in firing from the right shoulder ; but he never could acquire an 
equal facility with his companions in unfixing the bayonet and returning it to its sheath. 
But, as certain weapons and implements, like the rifle and the scythe, are specially 
adapted for the prevailing right hand, and some ancient implements have been recovered 
in confirmation of the antiquity of the bias; so the inveterate left-handed manipulator 
at times reinstates himself on an equality with rival workmen who have thus placed him 
at a disadvantage. Probably the most ancient example of an implement expressly adapt- 
ed for the right hand is the handle of a bronze sickle, found in 1873 at the lake-dwelling 
of Müringen, on the Lake of Brienne, Switzerland. Bronze sickles have long been famil- 
iar to the archeologist, among the relics of the prehistoric era, known as the Bronze Age; 
and their forms are included among the illustrations of Dr. Ferdinand Keller’s “ Lake 
Dwellings.” But the one now referred to is the first example that has been recovered 
showing the complete hafted implement. The handle is of yew, and is ingeniously carved 
so as to lie obliquely to the blade, and allow of its use close to the ground. It is a right- 
