ols JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
on a greatly more elaborate development than on the surface of the 
body generally, and that, while by this may be perceived only 
pressure and temperature, from the former are further conveyed 
to the brain the conception of form, size, weight, and local 
position. 
To trace a living hand correctly on paper, it should be laid flat, 
and the tracing made with a Mordan’s pencil. The lines of the 
hand may be then drawn by the eye. As in brute animals the greater 
portion of the whole hand is formed by the palm, so in proportion 
in man, as the palm dominates over the fingers, may the nature be 
deemed to partake of animal nature, due consideration being given 
to its consistence and thickness, as well as relative size, various 
qualities attaching to the large and small palms, hard or soft, 
flexible or inflexible, elastic or non-elastic, hollow or flat. It has 
been already indicated, as to the fingers, that with smooth fingers 
may be associated inspiration, intuition, passion; in the knotty 
fingers, induction, order, and arrangement. The ends of the fingers 
are also highly characteristic. They may be spatulous (or spread 
out), square, oval, or pointed. With the spatulous are indicated 
corporeal agitation, locomotion, and manual occupation; love for the 
industrial and mechanical arts, and constancy in pursuit and in 
affection ; but no feeling for the higher philosophical and meta- 
physical sciences, no love for spiritual poetry or for speculative 
pursuits. 
The square form is the index of precedent, custom, and routine; 
of a love for the moral, political, and social sciences; of didactic, 
analytic, and dramatic poetry; of grammar, geometry, metre, 
rhythm, symmetry, and arrangement; for art defined. It is a form 
general in England, said to be derived from the Normans, as the 
spatulous from the Saxons. 
The conical and pointed finger indicate widely-opposed habits of 
thought and feeling to either of the two just described. The artist 
now takes the place of the artisan; labour, regularity, and social 
order give place to ¢nsoucrance and contemplation, enthusiasm and 
personal independence. Sculpture, monumental architecture, poetry, 
painting, and song, find in the conical fingers their votaries, the 
beautiful and romantic their worshippers. ‘‘It is worthy of 
observation,” says M. D’Arpentigny, ‘that everywhere the Pro- 
testants as a people excel the Roman Catholics as a people in 
the mechanical arts, and are excelled again by the Roman 
