rying into effect the conceptions of the
mind so largely depends.

The external form of the foot differs widely from that of the hand; and
yet, when closely compared, the two present some singular resemblances.
Thus the ankle corresponds in a manner with the wrist; the sole with the
palm; the toes with the fingers; the great toe with the thumb. But the
toes, or digits of the foot, are far shorter in proportion than the
digits of the hand, and are less moveable, the want of mobility being
most striking in the great toe--which, again, is very much larger
in proportion to the other toes than the thumb to the fingers. In
considering this point, however, it must not be forgotten that the
civilized great toe, confined and cramped from childhood upwards, is
seen to a great disadvantage, and that in uncivilized and barefooted
people it retains a great amount of mobility, and even some sort of
opposability. 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 recollected 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 characters of each, we must
look below the skin, and compare the bony framework and its motor
apparatus in each (Fig. 18).

[Illustration: FIG. 18--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 carpus and the metacarpus; 'b b' that between the
latter and the proximal phalanges; 'c c' marks the ends of the distal
phalanges. The line "a' a'" in the foot indicates the boundary between
the tarsus and metatarsus; "b' b'" marks that between the metatarsus
and the proximal phalanges; and "c' c'" bounds the ends of the distal
phalanges; 'ca', the calcaneum; 'as', the astragalus; 'sc', the scaphoid
bone in the tarsus.]

The skeleton of the hand exhibits, in the region which we term the
wrist, and which is technically called the 'carpus'--two rows of closely
fitted polygonal bones, four in each row, which are tolerably equal in
size. The bones of the first row with the bones of the forearm, form the
wrist joint, and are arranged side b