Nov. 4, 1875J 



NATURE 



a recent number of the periodical, of which he is a joint 

 editor, a most suggestive paper, entitled " Some Remarks 

 upon a Fluctuating Character in the Human Hand." • As 

 the line of research is somewhat uncommon, and may, for 

 aught we know, be productive of important results, the 

 substance of Prof. Eckefs paper is here presented to 

 English readers in an abridged form. 



Henle, in his work on Anatomy, has made the observa- 

 tion that people have very vague ideas about objects even 

 which are assumed to be well known ; e.g. the query is 

 often put, How many feet has a crab ? or. How many toes 

 has a cat ?— questions which receive most varying answers 

 even in well-informed and educated circles. 



If, then, the question be put in the company of half a 

 dozen people, which finger is the longest — the index 

 (forefinger) or the " ring" (fourth) finger ? — the query can 

 but seldom be answered before the members in ques- 

 tion have been looked at It seems, further, very probable 

 that the authors of well-known anatomical works have 

 laid down as being the rule that which they have observed 

 on their own hands, so that we are enabled to tell in what 

 respect, as to digital arrangement, such and such savant 

 is endowed. For instance— Weber says that the "ring" 

 finger is only slightly shorter than the index ; Cams holds 

 that the latter digit is shorter than the ring finger ; Henle 

 is of the same opinion ; while, according to Hyrtl, it is 

 the index which comes next to the middle finger (the 

 longest) in length ; and Langer, lastly, says that the index 

 is generally shorter than the " ring " finger, but that there 

 are individuals in whom they are nearly of the same 

 length. 



Have these variations a morphological significance or 

 not ? For the solution of this, answers to the following 

 questions are necessary :— 



(a) How are the animals which come next after man, 

 in other words, the apes, and especially the anthropo- 

 morphous apes,f off in this particular ? 



O) What is the case with the lower races of mankind 

 in the same particular ? 



(y) What is the most usual digital arrangement in this 

 respect among the European races of man ? and lastly, 



(S) Which proportion of the two digits in question has 

 been accepted as the most beautiful and symmetrical, and 

 either knowingly or unknowingly adopted in art ? 



1. With regard to the Ape, the index is — and often 

 nsiderably — shorter than the "ring" finger. The dif- 

 ence in length is much more considerable in the 

 limpanzee than in the Gorilla ; the greatest difference, 

 at of 20 mm., having been found in the cast of a hand 



of a male Chimpanzee. 



2. Drawings— made by placing the hand upon paper, 

 the axis of the middle digit coinciding with a straight 

 line at right angles to the front or hind margin ot the 

 paper, supposing the latter to be a parallelogram, and 

 then following the outline of the fingers with a pencil — 

 were made of twenty-five male and twenty-four female 

 negroes, with the following result : — 



(a) Among the males twenty- four had the " ring" finger 

 longest, the average difference being 8 mm., while in the 

 remaining instance both fingers were of the same length. 



ib) Out of the females the " ring '"' finger was longest in 

 fifteen, the difference varying from 2 to 14 mm. ; in three 

 the fingers were of the same length ; while in six the 

 index was the longer, the difference being from 2 to 

 6 mm. 



Prof. Ecker has further found the " ring " finger longest 

 in casts and in several photographs of the hands of 

 negroes ; but in the hand of a " Turco " negro the index 

 was the longer of the two digits. In photographs of a 

 Hottentot and of an Australian female, the " ring " fi»ger 

 was the longer, while in a photograph of a female Sand- 

 wich Islander the reverse was the case. 



* " Einige Bemerkungen uber einen schwankenden Character in der 

 Hand des Menschen." Arrhh'/ur Anthropologic, viii*'' Bd. s. 67. 

 t Such as ihe Oraog, Gorilla, Chimpanzee, and Gibbons. 



3. As for Europeans, no conclusions have as yet been 

 arrived at ; but it appears probable that there is a rela- 

 tively greater length of the index finger in the female than 

 in the male sex ; and further, among the latter, in the 

 slight and highly developed, than in the short and 

 underset. 



4, Lastly, as regards Art. In that which is left to us 

 of the productions of the ancients, there are variations in 

 the relative length of the two digits, though it appears that 

 the index finger, and especially so in the female, ought to 

 be the longest In the Dying Gladiator the index (of the 

 left hand supported upon the knee) is the longer ; while 

 in the Apollo " Belvedere " (right hand) there is no appre- 

 ciable difference. In the Venus " Meddci,"* in the Venus 

 " pudica " of the GaU^rie Chiaramonti, in Rome, as well 

 as in the Venus by Praxiteles, in the Vatican, the index is 

 obviously the longest. In modem art there seems to be 

 no evidencejof rule or canon ; among painters, for instance, 

 there being, it appears, no fixed tradition on this point. In 

 Schadow's " Polyklet, oder von den Maassen des Men- 

 schen nach dem Geschlecht imd Alter " (2** Aufl. Fol., 

 Berlin, 1S67) no rule is laid dowTi. In the extended 

 hand of a powerful man, by Albrecht Diirer, the " ring ' 

 finger is the longest. 



It is not probable that a difference in the length of the 

 fingers in question is a merely indiWdual, so-called chance 

 (zufaUige) variation, for the reason that the whole form 

 of the hand is in relation with this. In the variety of 

 hand termed elevientary, by Cams (" Ueber Grund und 

 Bedeutung der verschiedenen Formen der Hiinde in ver- 

 schiedenen Personen;" 4to , Stuttgart, 1846}, the index 

 is shortest ; in the motor variety the difference is not con- 

 siderable, the index being slightly the longer ; in the 

 sensible form the index is longer, but not much so ; while 

 in the intellecttial (seelische) this finger is considerably the 

 longer. The opinion just given is further supported by 

 the fact that in the Mammalia the length of the various 

 digits is very constant 



It may be concluded, then, that — 



a. In the Apes as yet examined, the difference being 

 least marked in the Gorilla, the index finger is the shorter. 



/3. In Negroes, also, the index appears to be the 

 shorter. No sexual difference can as yet be established. 



7. In Europeans the variation is so great that at pre- 

 sent no mle can be laid down. 



8. When a great artist has attempted to represent a 

 beautiful and ideally perfect hand, he has never made the 

 index strikingly shorter than the " ring " finger. 



May it then not be possible, — 



1. That an index relatively longer than the "ring" 

 finger is the attribute of a higher form of beauty ? t 



2. That here, as in many other particulars, the female 

 form appears to be morphologically the purest ? 



The longest and least mobile finger is the middle one ; 

 the shortest, and most capable of motion, is the thumb, 

 or " poUex ; '' next in order in the scale of mobilitj' come 

 the little, "ring," and lastly the index, or forefinger. 



The question which Prof. Ecker has here raised, and 

 into which he intends to inquire further, may appear to 

 some trivial and unworthy of serious study ; but, far from 

 this, the satisfactory solution of it will, there is but little 

 doubt, be of the greatest interest not only to the philo- 

 sophical anatomist, but also to the sculptor and painter 

 who would fain go a little below the mere surface of his 

 art. It is certainly a subject in which, were they yet 

 alive, such men as Goethe and Winkelmann would take 

 the deepest interest John C. Galton 



* The famous Medician Venus has been said to be a copy by Cleomenes, 

 a son of ApoUodorus, of the Venus of Cnidos, by Praxiteles. Vide Winckei- 

 mann's " Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthimis." — J. C G. 



t The hands of the writer are, unfortunately, specimens of the lower 

 type, each index being considerably shorter thai the " ring "-.finger in the 

 same series. It is a curious fact that in each hand the radial artery at its 

 termination, instead of plunging beneath the volar muscles, takes a super- 

 ficial and somewhat dangerous course as far as the skin web which passes 

 from the poUex to the index. It would be interesting to know whether 

 these phenomena are correlative or uot. 



