There are unquestionably traces of prehensile capacity in the human foot; and even of remarkable adaptability to certain functions of the hand. Well-known cases have occurred of persons born without hands, or early deprived of them, learning to use their feet in many delicate operations, including not only the employment of pen and pencil, but the use of scissors, with a facility which demonstrates the latent capacity for separate action of the great toe, and its thumblike apposition to the others. In 1882 I witnessed, in the Museum at Antwerp, an artist without arms skilfully use his brushes with his right foot. He employed it with great ease, arranging his materials, opening his box of colours, selecting and compressing his tubes, and “handling” his brush, seemingly with a dexterity fully equal to that of his more favoured rivals. At an earlier date, during a visit to Boston, I had an opportunity of observing a woman, under similar disadvantages, execute elaborate pieces of scissor-work, and write not only with neatness, but with great rapidity. Nevertheless the human foot, in its perfect natural development, is not a hand. The small size of the toes as compared with the fingers, and the position and movements of the great toe, alike point to diverse functions and a greatly more limited range of action. But the capacity of the system of muscles of the foot--scarcely less elaborate than that of the hand,--is obscured to us by the rigid restraints of the modern shoe. The power of voluntary action in the toes manifests itself not only in cases where early mutilation, or malformation at birth, compels the substitution of the foot for the hand; but among savages, where the unshackled foot is in constant use in climbing and feeling its way through brake and jungle, the free use of the toes, and the power of separating the great toe from the others, are retained in the same way as may be seen in the involuntary movements of a healthy child. When camping out in long vacation holidays in the Canadian wilds, repeated experience has proved to me that the substitution for a few weeks of the soft, yielding deerskin moccasin of the Indian, in place of the rigid shoe, restores even to the unpractised foot of civilised man a freedom of action in the toes, a discriminating sense of touch, and a capacity for grasping rock or tree in walking or climbing, of which he has had no previous conception. The Australian picks up his spear with the naked foot; and the moccasin of the American Indian scarcely diminishes the like capacity to take hold of stick or stone. The Hindu tailor, in like manner, sits on the ground holding the cloth tightly stretched with his toes, while both hands are engaged in the work of the needle.