VIII.] HOMOLOGIES. 195 



M. Isidore Geoffrey St.-Hilaire remarks, 28 " L'anomalie 

 se re"pete d'un membre thoracique au membre abdominal 

 du meme cote"." And he afterward quotes Weitbrecht, 87 

 who had " observS dans un cas 1'absence simultanee aux 

 deux mains et aux deux pieds, de quelques doigts, de quel- 

 ques metaearpiens et metatarsiens, enfin de quelques os du 

 carpe et du tarse." 



Prof. Burt G. Wilder, in his paper on extra digits, 28 

 has recorded no less than twenty-four cases where such 

 excess coexisted in both little fingers ; also one case in 

 which the right little finger and little toe were so af- 

 fected ; six in which it was both the little fingers and both 

 the little toes ; and twenty-two other cases more or less 

 the same, but in which the details were not accurately to 

 be obtained. 



Mr. Darwin cites 29 a remarkable instance of what he is 

 inclined to regard as the development in the foot of birds 

 of a sort of representation of the wing-feathers of the hand. 

 He says : " In several distinct breeds of the pigeon and 

 fowl the legs and the two outer toes are heavily feathered, 

 so that, in the trumpeter pigeon, they appear like little 

 wings. In the feather-legged bantam, the 'boots,' or 

 feathers, which grow from the outside of the leg, and gen- 

 erally from the two outer toes, have, according to the ex- 

 cellent authority of Mr. Hewitt, been seen to exceed the 

 wing-feathers in length, and in one case were actually 

 ^ine and a half inches in length ! As Mr. Blyth has re- 

 marked to me, these leg-feathers resemble the primary wing- 

 feathers, and are totally unlike the fine down which naturally 

 grows on the legs of some birds, such as grouse and owls. 



26 "Hist. Generate des Anomalies," t. i., p. 228. Bruxelles, 1837. 



27 Nov. Comment. Petrop. t. ix., p. 269. 



28 Read on June 2, 1868, before the Massachusetts Medical Society. 

 See vol. ii., No. 3. 



29 " Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. ii., p. 322. 



