104 



THE RELATIONS OF MAN 



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 recol- 

 lected 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 



ft,' 



Hand. 



FIG. 19. The skeleton of the Hand and Foot of Man reduced from Dr. 

 Carter's drawings in Gray's ' Anatomy.' The hand is drawn to a larger scale 

 than the foot. The line a a in the hand indicates the boundary between the 



