“Then the part marked cl is the shoulder, and the bone that goes from there to the base of the neck is the collar-bone?” queried Emile. “Precisely.” “I see how the rest goes,” Louis hastened to interpose. “The bone marked h is the humerus, and the elbow is at the angle made by this bone with the next.” “My turn now,” put in Jules. “The two bones running side by side from the elbow to the wrist are marked cu and r. The first is the cubitus, the other the radius. Consequently ca is the wrist. But there I get lost.” “The wrist, I told you,” explained Uncle Paul, “is composed of several small bones. That structure we find at ca, the bat’s wrist.” “But, then, the hand?” queried Jules. “The palm of the hand and the five fingers which it supports are represented by the ribs of the wing and by po, which is the thumb. This is the shortest of the five fingers, as with man. It forms no part of the framework of the wing, but is free and is furnished with a hooked nail which the animal uses to cling by and also in walking. Finally, this thumb has two phalanges, as in the human thumb, and at the base is a small bone which in man forms a part of the palm of the hand. So much for the thumb. “Now let us look at those four long bones that start from the wrist (ca) and spread out through the greater part of the wing. Together with the similar but shorter bone of the thumb they represent the series of five bones composing the framework of the human palm. Next come the fingers with their phalanges (ph). In short, except for a few slight differences, the bat’s wing reproduces, piece by piece, the structure of the human arm.” “Yes,” Jules admitted, “it’s all there, even to the small bones of the wrist and fingers. Is it possible that a poor bat can pattern after us so closely? The horrid creature copies our arms to make itself wings.”