138 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



When engaged in some more general inquiries into the evidence of 

 the preferential use of the right hand among modern savage races, I 

 appealed to the experience of my friend Dr. John Rae, who, like my- 

 self, is inveterately left-handed, to ascertain if he had noted any such 

 habit among the Eskimos, or among the Indian tribes boi'dering on 

 the Hudson's Bay, among whom he long resided. In his reply he 

 informs me that, without having taken particular notice of Indian or' 

 Eskimo preference for one or other hand, he observed that some 

 among the latter were markedly ambi-dextrous. But, he adds, 

 "from a curious story told me by an Eskimo about a bear throwing 

 a large piece of ice at the head of a walrus; and telling me, as a note- 

 worthy fact, that he threw it with the left forepaw, as if it were 

 something unusual, it would seem to indicate that left-handedness- 

 was not very common among the Eskimos." 



So far as Mr. Cushing's observations and experiments supply any 

 satisfactory basis for the determination of the question as to the 

 general prevalence of right-handedness, they point unmistakably ta 

 such a conclvision, and he definitely advances the opinion that, with 

 few and rare exceptions, primitive man was right-handed. The evi- 

 dence thus far adduced is insuflS.cient for an absolute determination 

 of the question ; but any strongly -marked examples of the left-handed 

 workman's art among palaeolithic flint implements appear to be ex- 

 ceptional. No higher authority than Dr. John Evans can be 

 appealed to in reference to the manipulations of the primitive flint- 

 worker, and, in writing to me on the subject, he remarks : " I think 

 that there is some evidence of the flint-workers of old having been 

 right-handed : the particular twist, both in some palaeolithic imple- 

 ments, as in one in my own possession, from Hoxne, in Suflblk, and 

 in some American rifled arrow-heads, being due to the manner of 

 chipping, and being most in accordance with their being held in the 

 left hand and chipped with the right." In the detailed description,, 

 given in his " Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain," of the 

 Hoxne example above referred to,' he remarks : "It presents the 

 peculiarity, which is by no means uncommon in ovate implements, of 

 having the side edges not in one plane, but forming a sort of ogee 

 curve. In this instance the blade is twisted to such an extent, that 

 a line drawn through the two edges near the point is at an angle of 

 at least 45° to a line through the edges at the broadest part of the 

 implement. I think," he adds, " that this twisting of the edges was 



