270 ON THE RELATIONS OF MAN 



barefooted people it retains a great amount of mobility, 

 and even some sort of opposability. The Chinese boatmen 

 are said to be able to pull an oar, the artisans of Bengal to 

 weave, and the Carajas to steal fishhooks, by its help ; 

 though, after all, it must be recollected 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 

 characters of each, we must look below the skin, and com- 

 pare the bony framework and its motor apparatus in each 

 (Fig. 18). 



The skeleton of the hand exhibits, in the region which 

 we term the wrist, and which is technically called the carpus 

 two rows of closely fitted polygonal bones, four in each 

 row, which are tolerably equal in size. The bones of the 

 first row with the bones of the forearm form the wrist joint, 

 and are arranged side by side, no one greatly exceeding 

 or overlapping the rest. 



The four bones of the second row of the carpus bear 

 the four long bones which support the palm of the hand. 

 The fifth bone of the same character is articulated in a 

 much more free and moveable manner than the others, 

 with its carpal bone, and forms the base of the thumb. 

 These are called metacarpal bones, and they carry 

 the phalanges, or bones of the digits, of which there 

 are two in the thumb, and three in each of the 

 fingers. 



The skeleton of the foot is very like that of the hand in 

 some respects. Thus there are three phalanges in each 

 of the lesser toes, and only two in the great toe, which 

 answers to the thumb. There is a long bone, termed meta- 

 tarsal, answering to the metacarpal, for each digit ; and the 

 tarsus, which corresponds with the carpus, presents four 

 short polygonal bones in a row, which correspond very 

 closely with the four carpal bones of the second row of the 

 hand. In other respects the foot differs very widely from 

 the hand. Thus the great toe is the longest digit but one ; 

 and its metatarsal is far less moveably articulated with the 

 tarsus, than the metacarpal of the thumb with the carpus. 

 But a far more important distinction lies in the fact that, 

 instead of four more tarsal bones there are only three ; and 

 that these three are not arranged side by side, or in one row. 



