40 THE BONES. 



make the front part of the joint c touch the ground, as it 

 would be for us to bend the leg-bone forward below the 

 knee. The remaining portion, then, c D, of the bird's limb, 

 when compared with the similar part in our own leg, ought 

 to be called its ankle, and so in truth it is. This may be 

 more easily understood by referring to a very extraordinary- 

 looking bird, sometimes, though very rarely seen in England, 

 called the Stilted Plover, (Charadrius himantopus,) from 



Stilted Plover. 



the strange disproportion of its legs, a figure of which is 

 annexed, and of which No. 2 may be considered as an illus- 

 tration; in which an inexperienced observer will at first sight 

 not easily persuade himself that c D is nothing more than 

 the ankle, and the back part of the joint c its heel; yet so it 

 is, as the reader will at once perceive in the above figure, 

 where the bird is represented in its usual, and what may be 

 called, kneeling position; the real knee, corresponding with 

 B in fig. 2, of the leg, being partly hid in the feathers, and 

 the bend of the leg beneath the tail corresponding with c, 

 the remaining part from that point to the claws answering 

 to our foot and toes. 



There are some other beautiful contrivances in the limbs 



