“Now examine with me this picture of a bat’s skeleton. The bone marked o is the shoulder-blade. As with us, it forms the back of the shoulder, and it is triangular, wide, and flat.”
Skeleton of a Bat
o, shoulder-blade; cl, collar-bone; h, humerus; cu, cubitus; r, radius; ca, carpus or wrist; po, pollex or thumb; ph, phalanges.
“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 [[39]]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.