PALMISTRY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1606, 11 February 1884, Page 2

PALMISTRY.

■» Since the interest in, palmistry has been revived we have become more or loss inclined (says the Pall Mall Gazette) to regard our hands with more than common respect as the oracles by which our virtues as well as our shortcomings are registered, and on which, to a great measure, our weal or woe is dependent And as in palmistry the thumb plays .a chief part, so we find that in ancient as well as in modern times that member of the hand has been of great historical and social importance. An article on "thumb lore" in the Antiquary initiates us in all the legends we have formed of the thumb. We are told that "in the remotest days of antiquity," among Goths, Iberians, and Moors, the licking of the thumb was regarded as a solemn pledge or promise, Another custom, of even greater grace and elegance, was commonin Scotland, where among the lower-classes bargains were concluded by "lickings and joinings of'thumbs," But the same ceremony was not always a sign of agreement or a form of business; licking or biting the thumb was often a challenge, as in Romeo and Juliet, or at in Decker's Dead Terms/an act to '• beget quarrels." Sir Walter Scott also alludes to it in this sense, and many stories are told where ithe biting of the thumb, or even of the glove, caused death and destruction. Kissing the thumb was regarded as a sign of servility, the ceremony being performed at the interviews of tradesmen with superior customers, The important part which the Emperor's thumbs played in the days of gladiators is well, known; not so, perhaps, the Chinese custom which still prevails, to preserve an impression of the thumbs of criminals,' by which, as the thumb is said never to change in its formation and other characteristics, malefactors are identified on future committals. The very Latin name pollex is by antiquarieß pointed out as being the root from which the word potticori, "to promise to engage," is derived.