130 DANIEL WILSON ON 



able to have been the result of accident. This, howcA^er, appears to elnde research ; or 

 thus far, at least, has been ascribed to very diflerent causes. But to any who may still 

 regard it as v^'^orthy of further consideration, the special class of implements referred to 

 offers a trustworthy source of evidence, whereby to arrive at a relative estimate of the pre- 

 valent use of one or the other hand among uncultured races of men, alike, in ancient and 

 modern times. 



It is desirable that trustworthy statistics shall be collected ; but this can only be 

 done effectually by the co-operation of many observers. Very different opinions have thus 

 far found expression as to the relative proportion of left and right-handed men ; and in at- 

 tempting any approximate determination of it, the civilized and cultured classes, affected 

 by education, social habits, and many artificial usages, must be discriminated from those 

 in whom nature has been left to operate with little constraint. Professor Hyrtl of Vienna 

 assigns two per cent, as the ascertained proportion of left-handed persons ; and this deduc- 

 tion, based on obserA^ations made in one of the most civilized centres of modern Europe, 

 closely approximates to the oldest statistics of left-handedness, as recorded in the 

 Book of Judges. But they differ widely from other results, derived under special circum- 

 stances from careful obserA^ation ; as in some made by myself, on the loaders of barges on 

 the Mississippi, where from fifteen to twenty per cent, seemed to use the left hand. 

 In this case the subjects of observation represented the very rudest class of unskilled work- 

 men, where neither culture nor any special necessity for combined operation had tended 

 to develop a preference of one hand rather than another ; and where no nicety of mani- 

 pulation was recjuired. Among the earliest notices of skill displayed in the preferential 

 use of the left hand, that of the Benjamites, referred to in the Book of Judges, is specially 

 noteworthy. Among the tribe of Benjamin left-handedness, if not more prevalent than in 

 others of the Hebrew tribes, appears to have attracted greater notice. Ehud, the son of 

 Gera, the deliverer of his people from the servitude of Ezlon, King of Moab, was a 

 Benjamite, a left-handed man : and so, as he snatched from his right side the dagger with 

 which he slew the Moabitish king, the motion of his left hand would not excite suspicion 

 But the entire number of left-handed warriors of the tribe appears to haA^ barely, 

 amounted to 2.7 per cent. Out of tAA^enty-six thousand Benjamites, as we are told, all 

 warriors, there were seven hundred chosen men of the tribe, every one of Avhom was left- 

 handed, and could sling stones at a hair's-breadth and not miss. The instinctiA^ely left- 

 handed is cA^er dexterous in the true sense of that term. He is not only an exception to 

 many right-handed men ; he is still more an exception to the large majority in whom the 

 bias is so slight and the dexterity so partial, that their practise is little more than a 

 compliance with the usage of the majority. 



Dr. EA^ans has figured and described what he belieA^es to have been the flaking tools, 

 or fabricators, in earliest use among the flint workers for chipping out arroAV-heads and 

 other small implements. They are fashioned of the same material ; and some of them are 

 carefully wrought into a form best adapted lor being held in the hand of the workman. 

 Specimens of the bone arrow-flak ers in use by the Eskimo workers in flint are also 

 familiar to us. Different forms of those instruments are engraA'ed among the illustra- 

 tions to " The Ancient Stone Implements, "Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain," 

 from specimens in the Blackraore Museum and the Christy Collection ; ' and Dr. Evans 



' Evans' Stone Implements, Figs. 8, 9, 10. 



