104 



THE RELATIONS OF MAN 



The Chinese boatmen are said to be able to pnll an oar ; 

 the artisans of Bengal to weave, and the Carajas to steal 

 fishhooks by its help ; though, after all, it must be recol- 

 lected that the structure of its joints and the arrangement 

 of its bones, necessarily render its prehensile action far less 

 perfect than that of the thumb. 



But to gain a precise conception of the resemblances 

 and differences of the hand and foot, and of the distinctive 



JLancJ. Poof 



Fig. 19. — The skeleton of the Hand and Foot of Man reduced from Dr. 

 Carter's drawings in Gray's l Anatomy.' The hand is drawn to a larger scale 

 than the foot. The line a a in the hand indicates the boundary between the 



