Smallbones

“ Here there was another summons for Corporal Van Spitter.
"Mein Gott, I will not go," exclaimed the corporal.
"Yes, yes, go, corporal," replied Smallbones; "it's the best way to face the devil."
"Damn the devil!--and that's not swearing," exclaimed Short--such a long sentence out of his mouth was added to the marvels of the night--some even shrugged up their shoulders at that, as if it also were supernatural.
"I always say so," said Jansen, "I always say so--no tog, no tog, after all."
"No, no," replied Coble, shaking his head. ”

“ An't I cold enough already?"
"You'll be colder when you're under the bottom of the cutter," replied his master.
"O Lord! then it is keel-hauling a'ter all; why what have I done?" cried Smallbones, as the marines divested him of his shirt, and exposed his emaciated body to the pitiless storm.
"Where's Snarleyyow, sir?--confess."
"Snarleyyow--how should I know, sir? it's very hard, because your dog is not to be found, that I'm to be dragged under the bottom of a vessel."
"I'll teach you to throw paving-stones in the canal." ”

“ Except among the Gibbons, the vertebral column shows in the sacral region indications of that curve—or concavity in the back between the two convexities of the neck and loins—which is one of the distinctive characters of the human skeleton. The processes for the interlocking of the vertebræ, which are large in the lower Anthropoids, are much reduced in the Man-like Apes, and become inconspicuous in Man.
The breast-bone is flat, and resembles that of Man, and, in all, except the Orang, is composed of two bones. The arm-bone is often shorter than the fore-arm. ”

“ It must be remembered that the bones of the skull do not grow in the same ratio to the others, and that they attain their full size before those of the rest of the body. Therefore it is only in the case of the adult that accurate results can be calculated upon. Probably I have not done wisely in selecting a portion of the skull as a standard—a bone of the body, such as a femur or humerus might be more reliable—but I was driven to it by circumstances. ”

“ This enormous bone, pressing on the ground, gives a firm bearing and solid support to the continuous accumulation of weight, which we have been tracing down from the pelvis through the thigh and leg: in fact the heel-bone occupies nearly one-half of the entire length of the hind-foot; the bones of the toes are all short, excepting the extreme joint, which forms an enormous claw-bone; larger than the largest of those in the fore-foot, measuring thirteen inches in circumference, and having within its sheath a core, ten inches long, for the support of the horny claw with which it was invested. ”

“ In fact, a man on foot, resting his weight upon articulations that are elastic, and therefore compressible, is a little shorter than when he is recumbent.
If we examine the skeleton (see Fig. 9) , we discover that the single synthetic measure that constitutes the stature results from a sum of parts that differ greatly from one another. To be specific, it is composed of the long and short bones of the lower limbs; of flat bones, such as the pelvis and the skull; of little spongy bones, such as the vertebræ; all of which bones and parts obey different laws in the course of their growth. ”

“ These, like the skull, and all the other bones, are characterized by their unusual thickness, and the great development of all the elevations and depressions for the attachment of muscles. In the Anatomical Museum at Bonn, under the designation of 'Giant's-bones,' are some recent thigh-bones, with which in thickness the foregoing pretty nearly correspond, although they are shorter. ”

“ The skeleton begins as a continuum, and a continuum it remains all life long. The things that link bone with bone, {713} cartilage, ligaments, membranes, are fashioned out of the same primordial tissue, and come into being pari passu, with the bones themselves. The entire fabric has its soft parts and its hard, its rigid and its flexible parts; but until we disrupt and dismember its bony, gristly and fibrous parts, one from another, it exists simply as a “skeleton,” as one integral and individual whole. ”

“ But in the European, the greater length and massiveness of the legs has become very marked—the fore and hind limbs are 11 relatively more heterogeneous. Again, the greater ratio which the cranial bones bear to the facial bones illustrates the same truth. Among the vertebrata in general, progress is marked by an increasing heterogeneity in the vertebral column, and more especially in the vertebræ constituting the skull: the higher forms being distinguished by the relatively larger size of the bones which cover the brain, and the relatively smaller size of those which form the jaw, &c. ”

“ Each of these little round flat pieces of the backbone is called a vertebra, and is of a very peculiar shape. Suppose you took a bung of bone, and fastened on to one side of its edge a ring of bone. That would represent a vertebra. The solid bung is what is called the body, and the hollow ring is what is called the arch of the vertebra. Now if you put a number of these bodies together one upon the top of the other, so that the bodies all came together and the rings all came together, you would have something very like the vertebral column (see Frontispiece, also Fig. 2) . ”

“ In the study of this branch of anatomy he was interested mainly in the points of comparison between the human skeleton and the skeletons of other vertebrates. It was generally held that the intermaxillary bone, which is found in the upper jaw of some animals, is wanting in man, and this was regarded as a proof of the doctrine that the physical nature of man is vitally distinguished from that of other living creatures. ”

“ We now come to Bone, a tissue confined to the vertebrata, and typically shown only in the higher types. As we descend in the scale from birds and mammals to lizards, amphibia (frogs and toads) and fish, we find cartilage continually more important, and the bony constituent of the skeleton correspondingly less so. In such a type as the dog-fish, the skeleton is entirely cartilaginous, bone only occurs in connection with the animal's scales; it must have been in connection with scales that bone first appeared in the vertebrate sub-kingdom. ”

“ The leg-bone of a tall man is about one foot four inches in length, and the thigh of O'Brien, the Irish giant, whose skeleton, eight feet high, is mounted in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, is not quite two feet. But the leg-bone (tibia) of the Dinornis we know measured as much as two feet ten inches, and we have no reason to suppose, considering the disparity that exists in the specimens examined, that we have seen by any means the largest. ”

“ Every vertebra and rib, and even the small bones of the head and the formidable, recurved teeth, were perfect, while in all the great skeleton there was not a fragment of flesh nor a scale of the skin remaining. ”

“ The arms, of which the humeral segment is about equal in length to the fore-arm, are long, but reach only a little below the knee—their span being about a half more than the height of the body. The hands, which are wonderfully human in form, are broad, comparatively short, and less hook-like than in the Orang. ”

“ Long bones, like the humerus and femur, are suited to giving strength, form, and stiffness to certain parts, while irregular bones, like the vertebræ and the pelvic bones, are fitted for supporting and protecting organs. Others, like the wrist and ear bones, make possible a peculiar kind of motion, and still others, like the ribs, are adapted to more than one purpose. The vast differences in shape, size, structure, and surface among the various bones are but the conditions that adapt them to particular forms of service in the body. ”

“ The fact that the thigh-bone might easily have passed as that of a man, while the skull-fragment is so divergent from all modern forms as to be scarcely human, is of great interest. The contrast between the indications provided by the two bones was remarked at once. Some writers, rejecting certain other evidence on the point, then drew the inference that the human thigh-bone had been evolved and had arrived at the distinctive human condition in advance of the skull. ”

“ In each leg and foot, including the bones of the pelvis, there are thirty-one bones, making sixty-two in the pelvis, legs and feet. So that the adult human skeleton consists of two hundred and six bones, besides the thirty-two teeth. ”

“ Let us now come, at last, to the mechanical structure of bone, of which we find a well-known and classical illustration in the various bones of the human leg. In the case of the tibia, the bone is somewhat widened out above, and its hollow shaft is capped by an almost flattened roof, on which the weight of the body directly rest. ”

“ The limb-bones increased in thickness until they became extremely massive, to carry the immense weight of the body, and they eventually lost the marrow-cavities, which were filled up with spongy bone, a great gain in strength. As is generally, though not universally, true of the large and heavy mammals, there was no coössification between the limb-bones and no great increase in their proportionate length. The thigh-bone, or femur, lost the cylindrical shape of the shaft, becoming flattened and very broad, and acquiring something of the appearance of the same bone in the elephants. ”

“ In the flat bones, the compact texture forms two external layers, the thickness of which is between that of the middle of the long bones, and that of the extremity of the same bones, or that of the short ones. ”

“ Does the thigh have one bone in each? The shank of man has two bones, shin and splint bone. Do you see a groove near the end in the shank bone of a frog (Fig. 252) , indicating that it was formed by the union of a shin and a splint bone? The first two of the five bones of the ankle are elongated, giving the hind leg the appearance of having an extra joint (Fig. 253) . The foot consists of six digits, one of which, like the thumb on the fore limb, is rudimentary. The five developed toes give the five digits of the typical vertebrate foot. ”

“ The delicate sense of feeling depends on the nervous supply; and the power of clasping and holding on upon the bending or flexor muscles. A bony framework supports all these structures, and runs from the last bone of the sacrum to the tip, and consists of many separate vertebral bones placed in a long series. The first few bones which join on to the sacrum, and form the root of the tail, resemble the back-bone pieces, or vertebræ, to a certain extent. Each has a body, and also processes for jointing with the one before and behind, and a spine also. ”

“ The twenty-six bones are so fitted together that this wonderful arch is quite elastic, as you can prove by moving your own foot up and down.
The joints, where two bones which are to play upon each other come in contact, as they do at the elbow or shoulder, are made in different ways. The elbow only moves to and fro like a hinge; the hip and shoulder, like a "ball and socket," move every way. You do not need to be told that each kind of joint is found just where it is needed for the work it has to do ”

“ The Growth of the Limbs.—Recent studies, conducted principally by Godin in France, author of the classic work upon growth, have demonstrated that the long bones of the limbs obey certain special laws of biologic growth.
While a long bone is growing in length it does not grow in width or thickness, and while it is increasing in thickness it does not gain in length; hence the lengthening of the bones takes place in alternate periods; during the period of repose relative to growth in length, the bone gains in thickness. ”

“ The bones are all there, corresponding in number and general relations with those of the human or any other mammalian arm, but they are flattened out, and their contiguous ends, instead of presenting hinge-like joints, come in contact by flat surfaces, united together by strong ligamentous bands, and all wrapped up in an undivided covering of skin, which allows externally of no sign of the separate and many-jointed fingers seen in the skeleton. ”

“ Another bone that may be said to differ in structure is that known as the sternum or breastbone;7 it is the thin, soft bone to which the ribs are joined in the front of the body. In the young of both man and ape it is a mere cartilage which slowly ossifies from the top downward. ”

“ They become gradually converted into bone, and as bony processes, they remain separated for a time from the principal piece, by an intervening soft substance, which for the time being glues them to the shaft of the long bone. There are portions also on the ribs, where they hinge upon the spine, which at the age of eighteen have only commenced to develope from soft material into bone, and their mysterious transformation is not completed till the twentieth year of life. ”

“ I find that the bones are human bones, and are, in my opinion, all parts of the same person. They form a skeleton which is complete with the exception of the skull, the third finger of the left hand, the knee-caps, and the leg-bones—I mean the bones between the knees and the ankles. ”

“ All the bones except the mandible, hyoid, and columella are firmly united by interlocking sutures. In spite of this, however, growth of the whole skull and of the component bones goes on continuously throughout life, this growth being especially marked in the case of the facial as opposed to the cranial part of the skull.
2. All the bones appearing on the dorsal surface are remarkable for their curious roughened and pitted character; this feature is prominent also in many Labyrinthodonts.
3. The size of the jaws and teeth is very great. ”