22 



BIMANA. 



tebrates excel him, but in the plan or model after which he is 

 constructed 



The eagle, for example, has a more powerful vision ; the 

 hare is more keenly sensible to sound ; the dog and vulture are 

 more ready to catch the scent which is borne upon the breeze ; 

 but in man is found a nice adjustment, a "peculiar and felicitous 

 accuracy " of the senses, which, while ministering to his enjoy- 

 ment, enables him to cultivate a more thorough and pleasing 

 acquaintance with the objects by which he is surrounded. In 

 the power of speech, and the various exercises of this power by 

 which he makes known his wants, his desires, and his most ab- 

 stract mental conceptions ; in his processes of reasoning and in 

 his susceptibility of endlessly progressive improvement, he rises 

 high above every other animal existence. 



The several parts of the living human frame are suited to the 

 erect attitude for which it is distinguished. (See Plate III.) Man's 

 structure fits him for moving in an erect posture, and unfits him 

 for moving with ease in any other. He has, however, the ability 

 to imitate almost every motion but that of flight. As aids to such 

 imitation, he possesses, when in maturity and health, sixty bones 

 in his head, sixty in his thighs and legs, sixty -two in his arms and 

 hands, and sixty-seven in his trunk, and he has also four hun- 

 dred and thirty-four muscles. His foot is, in proportion to his 

 whole body, larger, broader, and stronger than that of any other 

 animal. The muscle called "flexor longus policis pedis" (the 

 muscle of the great toe,) terminates in a single tendon, and its 

 force is centered in the great toe, the chief point of resistance in 

 raising the body upon the heel. In the Orang-outang, the cor- 

 responding muscle terminates in three tendons, separately and 

 exclusively inserted in the three middle toes, to enable him to 

 grasp an object more forcibly in climbing, and thus more fully 

 meeting the wants of an animal that makes its home in the trees. 

 "Surely," says Professor Owen, "it is asking too much to be- 

 lieve that in the course of time, these three muscles should, un- 

 der any circumstances, become consolidated into owe, and that 

 one implanted in a toe to which none of the three tendons were 

 before attached." The teeth, bones and muscles of the monkey 

 decisively forbid the conclusion that he could by any ordinary 

 natural process, ever be expanded into a MAN. Man alone is 

 two handed ; in him the faculty of opposing the thumb to the 

 other fingers is carried to the highest perfection. In his " Bridge- 

 water Treatise," Sir Charles Bell says: "The structure of 

 the human hand is so much more complicated, and suited to so 

 many different offices, we ought to define the hand as belonging 



