LEFTHANDEDNESS. 471 



a time vastly more remote than Hebrew or Greek records, and among 

 a people in the most primitive condition of savage life, the preference 

 appears to have been given to the same hand which has been recog- 

 nized as the right hand among all civilized nations of historic times. 

 Such concurrent evidence seems to point to a uniform preference for 

 the same hand from remotest times, such as could not fail to eradicate 

 any mere exceptional habit; and so suggests with renewed force that 

 the use of the right hand is traceable to some peculiarity of organic 

 structure, or to some physiological law generally affecting the human 

 organization. Nor is it necessarily limited to man. As already 

 shown, there are indications suggestive of a disposition in some at 

 least of the lower animals to employ one limb in preference to the 

 other. 



A writer in the Cornhill Magazine, when referring to one remark- 

 able class of manifestations which seem to show that the faculty 

 of speech is mainly if riot wholly dependent on the left side of the 

 brain ; or at any rate that aphasia, or the loss of the power of vocal 

 expression of ideas, is accomj)anied with disease of that side of the 

 brain : says, '' Rightsidedness extends to the lower races. Birds, and 

 especially parrots, show rightsidedness. Dr. W. Ogle has found that 

 few parrots perch on the left leg. Now, parrots have that part at 

 least of the faculty of speech which depends on the memory of 

 successive sounds, and of the method of reproducing such imitation 

 of them as a parrot's powers permit ; and it is remarkable that their 

 left brain receives more blood, and is better developed than the right 

 brain." The same writer expresses his doubt as to monkeys showing 

 any tendency to righthandedness. This is a point to which careful 

 attention should be directed where opportunity offers. *In my former 

 paper I noticed the interesting treatise by Dr. Buchanan, Professor 

 of Physiology in the University of Glasgow, on the " Mechanical 

 Theory of the Predominance of the Right Hand over the Left." 

 But I was not then aware that Professor Struthers had followed up 

 his observations by a series of cai-eful investigations, the results of 

 which are set forth in his paper entitled, " On the relative weight 

 of the viscera on the two sides of the body ; and on the consequent 

 position of the centre of gravity to the right side." He there notes 

 that, " While the viscera of the quadruped have the same general 

 lateralized position as in man, there is a reason why this should be 

 carried to a greater extent in man than in the quadruped, owing to 



