468 LEFTHANDEDNESS. 



But thoiigli this is undoubtedly true of the majority, a certain number 

 of children will be found to manifest a distinct preference, at a very 

 early age, for one or the other hand. In the case of a niece of my 

 own, the lefthandedness showed itself very early ; and in my grand- 

 son, it was independently observed by its mother and nurse, and 

 brought under my notice, that so soon as he was able to grasp an 

 object and transfer it from one hand to the other, he gave the prefer- 

 ence to the left hand. A like decided preference for the right hand, 

 though doubtless also comparatively rare, is more frequent ; and the 

 further research is carried, the more manifest does it appear that 

 the preferential use of what we designate the right hand is natural 

 and instinctive with a sufficiently large number to determine the 

 prevalent usage. "With a smaller number an equally strong impulse 

 is felt pi'ompting to tbe use of the left hand ; but my opinion remains 

 unchanged, that with the majority righthandedness is no more than 

 the result of prevalent custom and education. 



Attention has already been drawn to the indications pointing to the 

 simultaneous use of the right and the left hand by two fellow flint 

 workers in the primitive flint-pits of Norfolk, styled " Grime's Graves." 

 But some more recent disclosures are suggestive of the preferential 

 use of the right hand among the men of Europe's palseoteclonic dawn.* 

 The recovery of specimens of imitative art, the work of the Troglodytes 

 of the Mammoth and Reindeer Periods of Southern France, has. 

 familiarized us with carvings and etchings, executed with a remark- 

 able degree of freedom and artistic truthfulness, by a people living at 

 the head waters of the Garonne, under social and climatic conditions 

 closely analogous to those of the Esquimaux of the present time. In 

 dexterity of handling and faithful portraiture, the specimens of 

 primitive art greatly surpass the most ingenious examples of drawing 

 or etching executed by modern savages. The drawing especially of 

 the mammoth, traced with a pointed implement on a tablet of ivory, 

 found in La Madelaine Cave, on the river Yez^re, is replete with 

 interest, alike as a piece of contemporary portraiture of the long- 

 extinct proboscidian of Europe, and as an evidence of the intel- 

 lectual development of contemporary man. But the drawings and 

 etchings on ivory thus executed by contemporaries of the mam- 

 moth and reindeer of Southern France have also a value for us 



* Vide Prehistoric Man, 3rd Ed., Vol. i., p. lOT. 



