ORIGIN OF OUR HANDS AND BACKBONE 551 



hands, so also had the pterodactyl, and the other huge 

 bird-like reptiles and dragons, which inhabited the 

 earth in ancient times, and were the forefathers of our 

 modern beasts of the field and birds of the air, rough 

 memorandum sketches of which are shown in the repro- 

 duction of a leaf from the author's note-book. It is 

 evident that they were the first experimental machines 

 from which the modern ones were gradually developed. 

 The pterodactyl was experimenting in the use of 

 hands as wings; it had a good idea, like our men with 

 the flying machine to-day, but like some of them, it got 

 on the wrong track. To make its wing it enlarged and 

 lengthened its little finger like the bow on an English 

 kite, and stretched a skin or membrane from that to its 

 body. By referring to the illustration on page 93 you 

 will see that our modern bat has very much improved 

 upon the crude attempts of the pterodactyl. The bat 

 has a hand of four fingers and a thumb, bone for bone, 

 like your own hand. Its thumb is small and free, its 

 forefingers are elongated like the ribs of an umbrella, 

 and, like the ribs of an umbrella, connected by a mem- 

 brane. The bat carries its elbow bent, and the skin runs 

 from its thumb to its shoulders, while the skin covering 

 the fingers runs from the ends of the fingers to the end 

 of the tail, the latter forming another umbrella rib or 

 kite stick. This is a vast improvement upon the awk- 

 ward attempt to make a wing out of a little finger. The 

 bat's flight, as you all know is easy, well sustained, and 

 skillful, but I doubt if the old animated aeroplane 

 of a pterodactyl could do any more than skim or sail 

 like a flying squirrel. It was probably what our modern 



