This is, however, a harmless piece of vanity in comparison with the monstrous efforts of the Chinese to mould the foot to their ideal by squeezing the heel and the toes together. They effect this to such a degree that (fig. 20) the heel-bone descends vertically from the ankle, the plantar arch is bent to an acute angle, and the foot is so crumpled up that all movement in it is effectually prevented, and the part is reduced almost to a mere stump. These observant and ingenious people have caught, it may be, the idea that compactness, elevation of instep, and sudden descent of heel are characteristics of the well-formed foot, and may urge that they are helping nature to perfection in the direction which she has herself indicated. But in their silly attempt at the preternatural, in this impious use, as it were, of fire stolen from heaven, they simply burn and cripple themselves, and render themselves ridiculous, and give to all other nations the much needed lesson that it is enough for man to follow as a humble imitator of his Maker’s works, and that his attempts to alter, or improve upon, any part of the wondrous design of creation will assuredly have the effect of spoiling and defacing it[3]. [3] It is a remarkable statement by a correspondent in _The Times_, Jan. 14th, 1861, that in the pillage of the Summer Palace of the Emperor of Pekin “all the ladies of the Court must have had natural-sized feet, all the slippers found in their rooms being large; not a single cramped-footed shoe was seen.” It seems that the several races of mankind are usually rather proud of their peculiarities, and that each has an inclination to make much of, and artificially exaggerate, the points in which it differs from the others. Thus the Chinese are remarkable for the spareness of their hair and the smallness of their feet; so the men shave their heads, leaving only the pig-tail, and the women squeeze up their feet in the remorseless manner we have seen. The Singhalese, who are flat-footed, are said to consider it one of the requisites for a ‘belle’ that the soles of her feet should not have any hollow. The red Indians of America delight in staining and painting their skins of a lively red colour. The Columbian tribe of Indians increase the natural lowness of their forehead by flattening it out in infancy, and succeed in bringing about a deformation of the skull almost as remarkable in its way as is the effect of Chinese cramping upon the foot. These people also take pains to reduce the small quantity of hair upon their eyebrows, lips, and chin, by plucking it out. _Joints of the Metatarsus with the Tarsus._ [Illustration: Figs. 25 24. 23. 22. 21.]