142 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



above all, the remarkably spirited drawing of the reindeer grazing, 

 from Thayngen in the Kesserloch — a sketch, marked by incident 

 both in the action of the animal and its surroundings, suggestive of 

 an actual study from nature ; — all appear to be left-hand drawings. 



The number of examples thus far adduced is obviously too small 

 to admit of any general conclusion as to the relative use of the right 

 or left hand teing based on their evidence ; but so far as it goes, it 

 suggests a much larger percentage of left-handed draftsmen than is to 

 be looked for on the assumption that right-handedness is the normal 

 condition of man. It indicates, moreover, the importance of keep- 

 ing in view the distinction between the preferential use of either 

 hand by the cultured and skilled workman, or the artist, and its em- 

 ployment among rude, unskilled labourers engaged in such toil as 

 may be readily accomplished by either hand. That the use of the 

 left hand is transmitted from parent to child ; and so, like other 

 peculiainties, is to some extent hereditaiy, is undoubted. This has, 

 therefore, to be kept in view in drawing any comprehensive deduc- 

 tions from a few examples confined to two or three localities. It 

 may be that the skilled draftsman of the Vez^re, or the gifted artist 

 to whom we owe the Kesserloch drawing, belonged to a family, or 

 i^ossibly a tiibe, among whom left-handedness prevailed to an unusual 

 extent, along with an amount of skill and dexterity such as is 

 frequently seen to accompany the instinctive use of the left hand. In 

 such circumstances left-handedness would be apt to be developed not 

 only hereditarily but by imitation. Yet even among those palaeoli- 

 thic draftsmen a preference for the right hand was evinced by the 

 majority. 



The more the subject is studied, the more it becomes manifest that 

 education, with the stimulus furnished by the necessities arising from 

 combined action, have much to do with a full development of right- 

 handedness. There is considerable evidence in favour of the idea 

 that in the majority of children, the bias leading to the preference 

 for either hand is so slight that no greater effort would be required 

 to develop the preferential use of the left than of the right hand. 

 But with a certain number the use of the right hand is natural and 

 instinctive. Others again are conscious of an equally strong im- 

 pulse to use the left hand ; and though education may control this, 

 it cannot eradicate it. In any enquiry, therefore, into the degree of 

 prevalence of right-handedness, and its instinctive, oi'ganic, or congen- 



