482 LEFTHANDEDNESS. 



SO ; but one of her brothers had much more than the usual facility 

 in using both hands; and in paddling, chopping, &c., used to shift 

 about the implement from one hand to the other in a way which I 

 envied. As to my sister-in-law, she had great advantages from her 

 lefthandedness. She was a very good performer on the piano, and 

 her bass was magnificent. If there was a part to be taken only with 

 one hand, she used to take the left as often as the right. But it was 

 at needle-work that I watched her with the greatest interest. If she 

 was cutting Out, she used to shift the scissors from one hand to the 

 other; and would have employed the left hand more, were it not 

 that all scissors, as she complained, are made righthanded, and she 

 wished, if possible, to procure a lefthanded pair. So also with the 

 needle, she used the right hand generally ; but in many delicate little 

 operations, her habit was to shift it to the left hand." 



In those and similar cases, the fact is illustrated that the left- 

 handed person is necessarily ambidextrous. He has the exceptional 

 " dexterity " resulting from the special organic aptitude of the left 

 hand, which is only paralleled in those cases of true righthandedness 

 where a corresponding organic aptitude is innate. Education, enforced 

 by the usage of the majority, begets for him the training of the 

 other and less facile hand ; while by an unwise neglect the majority 

 of mankind are content to leave the left hand as an untrained and 

 merely supplementary organ. From the days of the seven hundred 

 chosen men of the tribe of Benjaimin, eveiy one of whom, lefthanded, 

 could sling stones a,t a hair's^bi-eadth a,nd not miss, and of Ehud, 

 the lefthanded Benjamite, the deliverer of Israel from their servitude 

 to Eglon, king of Moab, the skill of the lefthanded has been notice- 

 able. Milton, in sportive satire, plays, in one of his sonnets, with 

 the name of " Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp." The name — 

 which is that of the Earl of Antrim's deputy, by whom the invasion 

 of Scotland, on behalf of the Stuarts, was attempted in 1644, — does 

 not assume a less strange aspect in its more genuine form of Alastair 

 MacCholla-Chiotach; that is, Alexander, son of Coll, the Lefthanded. 

 This was the elder Macdonald, of Colonsay, who was noted for his 

 ability to wield his claymore with equal dexterity in the left hand or 

 the right; and hence his soubriquet of Coll Kittoch, or Coll, the 

 Lefthanded. 



The skill of lefthanded artists has been repeatedly noted. Fore- 

 most amongst such stands Leonardo da Yinci, skilled as musician, 



