5 
palms, and that these may be even transmitted to our descendants. 
This is what I understand by chirognomy, or the legitimate 
deductions from scientific data as distinct from chiromancy, which 
professes to unravel the present and reveal the future. That the 
science of chirognomy (or the laws legitimately deducible from the 
structure of the hand) should have become degraded by association 
with superstition and imposture, is only a fate which it has shared 
with astronomy, chemistry, and even medicine. The hand is the 
great exponent of the universal sense of touch. All our senses 
may be considered as modifications of the sense of touch. Thus 
the rays of light touch the sensitive retina of the eye, the waves of 
sound touch and thereby excite the nerves of hearing, the 
particles emanating from odorous substances touch and impress the 
nerves of smell and taste, and these all important, nerves of touch 
are more highly developed’ and more sensitive in the hand than in 
almost any other part of the body. It would then indeed be 
strange if so important an organ as the hand were not more or less 
modified by the mental characteristics of the individual. This 
truth was well known to the ancient Greek sculptors, as one may 
perceive by the care with which they accord the characteristic 
hand to each individual statue. Practically we may consider the 
hand as divided into the palm and fingers. The palm may be 
looked on, roughly, as the animal, the fingers are the intellectual ~ 
part of the hand. The more the palm predominates over the 
fingers, the more animal will be the nature. This is well shown 
in the diagram of the hand of a gorilla. Who has not noticed the 
widely different feel of different palms, and the diversity of 
impressions conveyed to us by the touch of various hands. There 
are some whose touch immediately suggests confidence—we feel 
we can trust the owner There are again others from whose 
contact we involuntarily shrink, and feel inclined to wipe our own 
hands. The warm, soft, elastic, satiny palm, is the invariable 
index of youth, health, and sensibility, while the hard, harsh, 
hollow palm is no less certain evidence of the reverse. There are 
great differences of palms; they may be hard or soft, large or 
small, flexible or inflexible, moist or dry, hollow or flat, smooth and 
silky, or rough and harsh. According to Mr. Beamish, a ‘ thick 
hard palm is indicative of the animal instinets ; if thick and supple, 
of emotion and sensibility. If proportioned to the fingers, but hard 
and non-elastic it is the index of laborious stolidity; if hard but 
elastic, of laborious activity ; if soft, of indolence and tranquil enjoy- 
ment; if flexible, an appreciation of pleasure derived from the 
. senses; if elastic, of activity of the mental faculties ; if hollow and 
- firm, of mental vigour.” “ The hard hand may experience a strong 
feeling of attachment, but exhibit little tenderness, while the soft 
