HAND AND LEFT-HANDEDNESS. 28 
hand executed the transcription with greatest ease. In proof of the general facility thus 
acquired, I may add that I find no difficulty in drawing at the same time, with a pencil 
in each hand, profiles of men or animals facing each other. The attempt to draw diffe- 
rent objects, as a dog’s head with the one hand and a human profile with the other, is 
unsuccessful, owing to the complex mental operation involved; and in this case the 
coéperation is apt to be between the mind and the more facile hand. In the simultaneous 
drawing of reverse profiles, there is what, to an ordinary observer, would appear to be 
thorough ambidexterity. Nevertheless, while there is in such cases of ambidexterity, 
characteristic of most left-handed persons, little less command of the right hand than in 
those exclusively right-handed, it is wholly acquired ; nor, in my own experience, has the 
habit of considerably more than half a century overcome the preferential use of the other 
hand. 
When attending the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science held at Buffalo in 1867, my attention was attracted by the facility with which 
Professor Edward 8. Morse used his left hand when illustrating his communications by 
crayon drawings on the blackboard. His ability in thus appealing to the eye is well 
known. The Boston “Evening Transcript,” in commenting on a course of lectures 
delivered there, thus proceeds: “We must not omit to mention the wonderful skill 
displayed by Professor Morse in his blackboard drawings of illustrations, using either 
hand with facility, but working chiefly with the left hand. The rapidity, simplicity, 
and remarkable finish of these drawings elicited the heartiest applause of his audience.” 
Referring to the narrative of my own experience as a naturally left-handed person 
subjected to the usual right-hand training with pen, pencil, knife, etc., Professor Morse 
remarks in a letter to me: “I was particularly struck by the description of your experiences 
in the matter, for they so closely accord with my own: my teachers having in vain endea- 
‘ voured to break off the use of the left hand, which only resulted in teaching me to use my 
right hand also. At a short distance, I can toss or throw with the right hand quite as accu- 
rately as I can with my left. But when it comes to flinging a stone or other object a long 
distance, I always use the left hand as coming the most natural. There are two things 
which I cannot possibly do with my right hand, and that is to drive a nail, or to carve, 
cut, or whittle. For several years I followed the occupation of mechanical draughtsman, 
and I may say that there was absolutely no preference in the use of either hand; and in 
marking labels, or lettering a plan, one hand was just as correct as the other.” I may 
add here, that in my own case, though habitually using the pen in my right hand, yet 
when correcting a proof, or engaged in other disconnected writing, especially if using a 
pencil, I am apt to resort to the left hand without being conscious of the change. In 
drawing, I rarely use the right hand, and for any specially delicate piece of work, should 
find it inadequate to the task. 
The same facility is illustrated in the varying caligraphy of a letter of Professor 
Morse in which he furnished me with the best practical illustration of the ambidextrous 
skill so frequently acquired by the left handed. He thus writes: “ You will observe that 
the first page is written with the right hand, the upper third of this page with the left 
hand, the usual way [but with reversed slope], the middle third of the page with the left 
hand, reversed [i.e. from right to left], and now I am again writing with the right hand. 
As I have habitually used the right hand in writing, I write more rapidly than with 
