40 
THE BONES. 
make the front part of the joint c touch the ground, as it 
would be for us to bend the leg-hone 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 he 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, ( C liar adr ins Jiimantopus ,) from 
Stilted Plover. 
the strange disproportion of its legs, a figure of which is 
annexed, and of which No. 2 may he 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 hack 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 
