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 ⁠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 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 the 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.