LARGE HANDS. 87 



cause shortness of sight by altering the spherical 

 shape of the eye-ball. (2 ^Panmixia, or the sus- 

 pension of natural selection, together with altered 

 habits, will account for an increase of short-sight 

 among the population generally] (3) Long- 

 sighted people could not work at watchmaking 

 and engraving so comfortably and advantageously 

 as at other occupations, and hence would be less 

 likely to take to such callings. 



LARGER HANDS OF LABOURERS' INFANTS. 1 



These are best explained as the result of natural 

 selection and of the diminution of the hand by 

 sexual selection in the gentry. If the larger hands 

 of labourers' infants are really due to the inherited 

 effects of ancestral use, why does the development 

 occur so early in life, instead of only at a corre- 

 sponding period, as is the rule ? During the first 



1 Descent of Man, p. 33. 



