[girdwooi>] right and LEFT HANDEDNESS 181 



handed by example and education and so throw their weight with the 

 right-handed number. 



It is also suggested that the lower animals, the apes and quadrupeds, 

 do not exhibit any peculiarity of right and left-handedness, this state- 

 ment is perhaps due to want of closer observation of the habits of the 

 lower animals, the monkeys are quadrumanous animals, using their fore 

 hands as feet as well as prehensible organs, and indifferently right or 

 'eft as occasion may require. So quadrupeds use all four feet as medium 

 of support and progression and there is apparently no reason why they 

 should make use of one side more than the other. Yet as we shall see 

 there are reasons why there is a possible difference of the two sides with 

 them also. 



In man, in very early childhood, the mother carries her infant on 

 her left arm and thus the child's right arm is compressed against the 

 mother's breast, this would leave the child's left hand and arm free to 

 move and would give the child the earliest tendency to use its left hand 

 most. 



This habit pervades most ci^nlized races who are more right-handed 

 than the more uncivilized, the females of which latter races carry their 

 babies slung over the shoulders in some way; and hence there is no 

 special inducement for the child to use either hand more than the other. 



The late Dr. Gilbert Fiulay Girdwood, of London, the writer's 

 father, and to whom the writer is indebted for many suggestions and 

 tlionghts on the habits and instincts of the lower animals, and to whom 

 the writer now desires to give all credit for whatever of value may be 

 in these thoughts and facts on this subject, and whose death in 1870 

 prevented his carrying out what he doubtless would have done far better 

 than his son. 



Amongst other things he observed, was the fact that in horses where 

 there is one white leg it will probably be the near hind leg, if two, these 

 will likely be the two hind legs, and if three, the two hind and near fore 

 leg, this observation has been extended find an official list of 3,000 horses 

 is appended which was obtained by writing to all the veterinary ofl&ces 

 in the United States Army in cavalry regiments and horse artillery and 

 to the veterinary officers of the Xorthwest Mounted Police, to all of whom 

 the writer's indebtedness is here acknowledged and thanks returned, as 

 well as to Dr. Higgins, Bacteriologist to the Veterinary Department at 

 Ottawa. 



