Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/631

Rh been a form of unilateral stimulation which would act to effect a structural change in one hemisphere over and above the other. But, apart from this, there is every reason to expect, quite independently of function, that two organs of such comparative separateness and independence of function would not remain exactly balanced in function; in short, spontaneous variations giving advantageous dextrality would inevitably arise and persist as soon as the habits of life were not such that more important functions, such as locomotion, tended to suppress them and restore bilateral equilibrium. There are, as far as I know, very few published observations of fact in regard to simian or animal dextrality.

It is likely, therefore, that right-handedness in the child is due to differences in the two half-brains, reached at an early stage in life, that the promise of it is inherited, and that the influences of infancy have little effect upon it. Yet, of course, regular habits of disuse or of the cultivation of the other hand may, as the child grows up, diminish or destroy the disparity between the two. And this inherited brain-onesidedness also accounts for the association of right-handedness and speech—the speech function being a further development of the same unilateral potency for movement found first in right or left handedness.

Marquis of Salisbury has been nominated as president of the next meeting of the British Association, which will be held in Oxford, August 8th. In proposing him, Sir F. Bramwell mentioned, as among the claims of the marquis, that he had been Chancellor of the University of Oxford since 1880, that he would therefore represent both hosts and guests, that he was a distinguished statesman, a courteous gentleman, a member of the Council of the Royal Society, and a true man of science. Ipswich has been designated as the place for the meeting of 1895.