66 THE HOUSE I LIVE IN. 



and there are fourteen, besides the wrist are 

 hinge joints, and the ends of the bones are 

 made a little like door hinges. Of course 

 they only bend in one direction. Where the 

 fingers join to the metacarpal bones, there is 

 much more freedom of motion than at the 

 hinge-like finger joints. But the joint at the 

 wrist admits of motion, very freely, in every 

 direction. 



When the bones of the hand are not quite 

 so naked as they appear in the engraving, but 

 are dressed up with muscles, tendons, mem- 

 branes, nerves, arteries and veins, and covered 

 with skin, nails, &c., in a manner which I 

 cannot now fully describe, the whole presents 

 a most beautiful appearance. Beautiful and 

 useful as it is, however, and placed before our 

 eyes from the time we see the light till we 

 sleep in death, there are few things in the 

 whole visible world, of which not only chil- 

 dren, but adults, are so ignorant ! 



So important is the human hand, as a mem- 

 ber of the system, that Dr. Bell's Bridgewater 

 Treatise a pretty large volume is wholly de- 

 voted to a description of it. The reader will 



