398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



footed animals, manus and ^:)es) are arranged on a uniform plan : to 

 each five digits, the first having two phalanges and the others three. 

 The first digit is generally attenuated, often suppressed, but whenever 

 it exists it has two phalanges only. 



This curious difference is nowhere, so far as I know, explained. I 

 can not discover that any animal (below man), recent or fossil, exists 

 or has existed from the times of the Trias formations till now in which 

 this arrangement has appeared to be essential. It may be of some 

 advantage in the quadrumana, and doubtless the human hand is thus 

 better fitted for its functions, but it seems to me to be much more diffi- 

 cult to imagine it possible for any other arrangement to exist in the 

 foot unless the whole scheme of it, so to speak, were changed. It is 

 essential that the only joint in the great-toe should be drawn to the 

 ground by the strong flexor tendon attached to the final phalanx close 

 to it ; if another joint existed it must rise up, as occurs in the other 

 toes, and the solid bearing would be lost. Apart from this, it must 

 be admitted that it is mainly due to the special development of the 

 great-toe in a line with the long axis of the foot that man is enabled 

 to exercise the attribute, in all ages regarded as a noble one, of stand- 

 ing erect. Yet this special feature is the one which the conventional 

 boot does most to conceal, and in direct proportion as it is successfully 

 concealed the wearer is supposed to be dressed in good taste. It would 

 seem to be regarded as necessary to reduce the foot to even-sided sym- 

 metry ; but there is no law of beauty vi^hich requires this. Mr. Rus- 

 kin assuredly would not say that it is in any of " the eternal canons of 

 loveliness " decreed that an object to be beautiful must be symmetri- 

 cal. An architect required to provide more space on one than on the 

 other side of a building would not seek to conceal or even to minimize 

 the difference ; he would seek rather to accentuate it, and give the 

 two sides of the structure distinctive features. To me it appears that 

 it is on this principle only that a boot, to be at once useful, graceful, 

 and appropriate, can be designed. 



Moreover, the sense of symmetry, natural and reasonable where 

 the same function has to be performed, is, or ought to be, satisfied by 

 the exact correspondence of the two feet, which, taken jointly, may be 

 described as the two halves of an unequally expanded dome, irregu- 

 larly extended at the base, the greatest extension being in the line of 

 the greatest expansion of the dome, through which line the division 

 runs. The dividing-line thus makes the margin of the two feet paral- 

 lel to each other. It may be that the inner margin of the great-toe, 

 if produced backward, would fall a little distance from the inner side 

 of the heel. A perfect adult foot, in which the great-toe is not and 

 never has been diverted outward, and in which there has been no con- 

 sequent thickening of the large joint, is not easy to find. In children 

 the inner line is often visibly concave. It may be remarked that in 

 rest the great-toe is everted as well as drawn upward, in which posi- 



