A New Palmistry

Abstract

I HAVE lately consulted two standard works upon the proportions of the human figure to which Prof. Ecker does not refer in the suggestive paper of which I gave an abstract in NATURE (vol. xiii. p. 8), in the hope of finding some definite information as to the relative lengths of the “index” and “ring” fingers. In the first of these two works, Quetelet's “Anthropométrie” (Bruxelles, 1870), no mention whatever is made of the proportions of the several digits, whether of hand or of foot; while from the second authority, the “Proportions-lehre” of Carl Gustav Carus (Leipzig, 1854), all the information that can be derived, meagre as it is, is purely inferential. In the skeleton of a hand represented at Fig. 4, Taf. iii. of this fine folio work, the “index” is considerably longer than the “ring” finger; and in the letter-press explanatory of this plate, a table is given of the lengths of the various factors of the digits, e.g. the metacarpals and the three phalanges, in “modul-minutes,” constant lengths, each of which is equivalent to about seven millimetres. Now the length of the “index” is twenty-three, while that of the “ring” finger is only twenty “modul-minutes,” the former thus exceeding the latter digit by about twenty-one millimetres, a difference much greater than any which has been recorded by Prof. Ecker. In the extended left hand of an ideal (sexless) figure, at Taf. iv. (ibid.), the “ring” and “index” digits are of the same length, the former being perhaps a shade longer.