Note 653 — Chapter XVII · ON THE THEORY OF TRANSFORMATIONS, OR THE COMPARISON OF RELATED FORMS*

This significance is particularly remarkable in connection with the development of speed, for the metacarpal region is the seat of very important leverage in the propulsion of the body. In the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, there stand side by side the skeleton of an immense carthorse (celebrated for having drawn all the stones of the Bell Rock Lighthouse to the shore), and a beautiful skeleton of a racehorse, which (though the fact is disputed) there is good reason to believe is the actual skeleton of Eclipse. When I was a boy my grandfather used to point out to me that the cannon-bone of the little racer is not only relatively, but actually, longer than that of the great Clydesdale.