April 14, 1870] 
NATURE 
605 
Church is split, but still standing. In the old palace of the 
Governor, one part of the building fell in. There is hardly a 
house that has not been more or less seriously injured. The earth- 
quake is said to have been more violent still in the neighbouring 
places, Balacan and Cavite, where also a lamentable loss of 
human life took place. Except the first two shocks, with 
which the earthquake began, the movement of the earth’s surface 
was horizontal, but the violence was not less than that in the 
year 1863. If the shocks from below had recurred, Manilla 
would in all probability have been to-day but a heap of ruins.— 
3rd October: Yesterday evening, at six o’clock, we had a 
second earthquake with horizontal movement, and of rather 
long duration.—q4th October: Yesterday evening, at eight 
o'clock, another earthquake of short duration. ‘The original 
news from Balacan and Cavite is confirmed : in the first locality 
nearly all the stone houses fell in; amongst them the church, 
the town-hall, the parsonage, &c. —1ith October: The 
shocks were repeated on the two following days—(on 
the 4th and 5th) so that we have been visited with earth- 
quakes on five consecutive days. Since then there has been 
quiet. According to the accounts received to-day from the 
provinces, the earthquake was felt throughout the whole of 
the Island of Luzon, that is to say, over an extent of country 
six times larger than Wales. The earthquake is said to have 
been most destructive in the southern province of Albay.” It 
is evident from all this that we have here no mere ordinary 
earthquake, but, in point of fact, an event resembling the earth- 
quake of 1863, as expressly observed in the passages cited. 
The question will now occur to every thinking man: Is 
this exact concurrence of prediction with observation only an 
accident, or the actual expression of a law of nature? Is the 
circumstance that the catastrophe happened two hours and a 
half after the culmination of the Moon, which took place on that 
day in the zenith of Manilla, only a playful freak of the subter- 
ranean goblins, or is it connected with that theory according to 
which earthquakes occur, under favourable circumstances, at 
those places situated immediately over the summit of the tidal 
waye*? He who answers the question without previously 
examining into the matter, adopts certainly the most convenient 
method. But such is not the conduct of a friend of truth. I 
have derived my answer from the investigation mentioned in the 
commencement of this communication, and believe that what I 
have published is a sufficient justification for the prediction I 
have made ; at the same time I consider that I may, in reliance 
upon their professional feeling, venture to demand from the 
representatives of science that they pass no judgment on my 
views, without knowing them in their entirety. 
Prague Rupo.Fr FAs, Editor of ‘‘ Sirius ” 
Right-Handedness 
Ir asked what part of the human body seems chiefly affected 
by advancing civilisation, I would be inclined to reply that it is 
the right hand. 
At first sight the four-handed mammals might be thought to 
have an advantage ; but because four hands are employed both 
for prehension and locomotion, while in man there is one pair 
of organs for each, man’s two hands are worth more than the 
ape’s four. As man rises from the rudest stages—such as 
digging roots, hunting, and tending cattle, to arts which are 
highly mechanical—the right hand becomes a more special and 
serviceable organ than the left, so that the loss of it to an en- 
graver, a clerk, or an artist, compared to the loss of the left, 
would be a much more serious affair than it would be to a drover, 
who could clutch his stick or gesticulate to his dog almost as 
well with the one hand as the other. Admitting that, physio- 
logically, there is a slight reason for the preference of the right 
hand, all our tools and fashions lend themselves to encourage its 
further dexterity. Screws, gimblets, &c., are made to suit the 
supinating motion of the right hand. Tools of the Scissor kind 
are also made for the right hand, and I have seen a print-cutter’s 
gauge made specially for a left-handed person fetch a very low 
price when it came to be sold. The slant in writing, the shed of 
the hair in boys, the manner in which buttons and hooks are 
placed on clothes, and the system of writing from left to right, 
all seem related to right-handedness. 
* The point of greatest pressure outwards against the earth’s crust—such 
pressure being caused, according tomy theory, by the action of the tide of the 
semi-fluid central mass of the earth—is situated mathematically under the 
place in the zenith of which the moon is at the time. Local circumstances 
unfavourable to the occurrence of earthquakes ca, and in most cases, wezé/, 
modify the observed result, so as to cause it to vary more or less from the 
mathematical calculation. 
In drawing, the pupil is recommended to begin at the upper- 
most corner on the left hand side, where the ornament is of a 
small and repeating character, so as to avoid fingering the part 
already finished. A schoolmaster I knew was able to detect 
left-handed boys, when they used the pen with the left against 
orders, by the writing either being straight or sloped the wrong 
way. Most boys know that it is easier to draw a profile with 
the face looking towards the left hand ; yet on looking over the 
hieroglyphs in the British Museum the faces will be generally 
found towards the right. The normal way of writing the hiero- 
glyphs is from right to left, though frequent instances occur of 
their being written from left to right. 
I believe there is a constitutional reason for the preference 
given to the right hand, but I also believe that habit has strength- 
ened nature’s tendency, and that as the touch of the hereditary 
Hindoo weaver has become proyerbially fine, so the aptitude of 
the right hand over the left is greater, with advancing civilisation, 
than ina state ulterly savage. At that period of a child’s life when 
creeping seems a more natural mode of progression than walk- 
ing, there is no apparent dexterity in the right hand more than 
the left, and when man was almost utterly without arts, I can 
believe his state to have been ambidexter or ambisinister. 
The elephant is known to employ one tusk more than another 
in rooting, &c., and when I asked Sir Samuel Baker which tusk 
went by the name of the “servant,” he informed me that it was 
the right tusk generally, but the exceptions to the rule were far 
more numerous than was the phenomenon of left-handedness 
with human beings. 
We have no reliable statistics of the proportion of left-handed 
persons to right in ancient or in savage nations. If Judges xx. 
15, 16, is to have any weight in the matter, the proportion of 
left-handed in the tribe of Benjamin seems to have been greater 
than at the present day. 
Left-handedness is very mysterious; it seems quite against 
physiological deductions and the whole tendency of arts and 
fashion. Prof. Buchanan, of Glasgow, who wrote an able 
memoir on right-handedness in 1862, thinks that left-handedness 
may be due to transposition of the viscera, and tells me that his 
friend Dr. Aitken found such a case. But surely transposition 
of the viscera must be far rarer than obstinate left-handedness. 
In cases of left-handed persons which I have examined, the 
limbs of the left side were proportionally larger, just as those of 
the right side are in normal cases. I have also found that left- 
handedness is hereditary. tsb 
The Balance of Nature 
PREVIOUSLY to the recent wonderful Spectrum discoveries the 
sun’s energy attracted more attention from savas, and many 
apparently extravagant theories were offered in explanation of 
this most wonderful of all physical phenomena ; it is probable 
that the few remarks I have to make may appear equally 
extravagant. 
As my intention is to allude more especially to the mainte- 
nance of the sun’s energy, I will only make a passing observation 
as to its origin. The two conditions in which we find matter in 
the solar system are that of orbital motion and central repose ;~ 
in the latter condition matter exhibits its energy in the form of 
light and heat; whilst in the former the light and heat 
are transformed into motion. If the earth was suddenly brought 
to a condition of rest, its energy, hitherto under the form 
of motion, would be exhibited as light and heat, and it would in 
a certain degree be converted into a sun. 
If it could be shown that the sun was surrounded by an 
absolute non-conductor of its forces, it evidently would retain 
its energy for ever. As there would be no exhaustion, the 
sensations of light and heat would no longer exist. Now we 
reasonably believe that all space is filled with a highly elastic 
fluid or ether—this ether in a state of constant and intense 
action giving rise to the phenomena of solar light and_ heat. 
But if no obstacle existed to check or interfere with this 
action of the ether, it would, like any other body moving 
in space, retain its action for ever, without the necessity of 
a continuously acting agency or cause. If this can be granted, 
then it follows that the energy of the sun—which may have been 
necessary in the beginning to give this action to the ether—is no 
longer exhausted when the ether is once in motion, Hence this 
active ether is really an absolute preserver or non-conductor of 
the solar power or force, exhibiting itself as light, heat, &c. 
But certain obstacles do exist to check the action of the ether. 
These are the various bodies which move in space and revolve 
