128 
Notices of Books. 
[January, 
theses, but facts. What is still worse, these men make it their 
business to ridicule and disparage the earnest enquirer who is 
searching for the pearls which they trample under foot.* 
Mr. Thompson gives a survey of “ some of the more special 
methods of physical science which have been of service in the 
acquisition of facfls.” He enumerates — Casual Observation , 
Methods of Comparison, Methods of Precision, Methods of Anal- 
ogy, Methods of Hypothesis, and Residual Methods, each of these 
being explained by reference to cases of its successful application. 
With the last-mentioned method he connects the names of Boyle, 
Wollaston, Faraday, and Brewster in the past, and that of Mr. 
Crookes in the present. 
“ As a mental and moral training,” the author observes,” “ the 
pursuit of the scientific method is priceless.” “ He who will be 
warped by prejudice, by passion, or by fear cannot investigate 
nature rightly.” 
The students of the Bristol University College may well be 
congratulated on a teacher whose conceptions of the methods and 
the duties of science are so clear, so wide, and so lofty. 
The Canadian Journal of Science, Literature, and History. 
Vol. XV., No. VI., July, 1877. Toronto: Copp, Clark, and 
Co. 
This issue opens with an interesting paper on “ Left-handedness,” 
by Dr. D. Wilson, in which the important question is raised 
whether any phenomenon corresponding to the preferential use of 
the right hand in man can be traced in the inferior animals and 
especially in apes. ft is curious that the handle of a bronze 
sickle found at the lake-dwellings of Moringen, on the Lake of 
Brienne, in Switzerland, is adapted for use with the right hand. 
But the deer-horn picks recovered from the “ Grime’s Graves ” 
flint pits are not invariably right-handed. “ Left-handedness,” 
the author considers, “ is inherited and transmitted, though in an 
irregular manner and with varying intensity ; that the range of 
the influence, to whatever source we may trace it, affedfls other 
organs of the same side only partially and uncertainly.” He de- 
clares that with the majority of mankind the left hand is syste- 
matically reduced to the condition of a comparatively useless mem- 
ber. He does not, however, give sufficient prominence to the 
fa eft that this uselessness among right-handed persons varies very 
considerably in degree. We have met with persons who, without 
any previous training, could on the very first attempt write 
legibly with the left hand, whilst others failed completely even 
after many trials. 
* This treatment of truth is not, it appears, confined to the pacliy- dermata. 
