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Then some one turned up another thigh-bone four feet six or more, and that they called AEpyornis Titan. Then your vastus was found after old Havers died, in his collection, and then a vastissimus turned up." "Winslow was telling me as much," said the man with the scar. "If they get any more AEpyornises, he reckons some scientific swell will go and burst a blood-vessel.
The elephant, when he lies down, stretches his legs out behind him, not under him, as does the horse a beautiful arrangement for an animal of his vast bulk, as thus, without any violent strain, he is able to lift himself up. The thigh-bone is very much longer in proportion to that of the metatarsus the one below it than is the case with other animals, and thus the knee is very much lower down.
‘We went to the house or chapel in which the holy image was kept—a frightful, ugly black figure of Holy Mary, dressed in her usual way; and after we had stared at the figure, and some of our party had bowed down to it, we were shown a great many things which were called holy relics, which consisted of thumb-nails, and fore-nails, and toe-nails, and hair, and teeth, and a feather or two, and a mighty thigh-bone, but whether of a man or a camel I can’t say; all of which things, I was told, if properly touched and handled, had mighty power to cure all kinds of disorders.
We only know what became of a thigh-bone which was somehow rescued by a monk belonging to the abbey. He kept it for some time, and in 1642 it was replaced in a new, but much less gorgeous tomb. About one hundred years later, it was moved to another part of the church, but in the Revolution this third tomb was broken into, and the last relic of the Conqueror was lost.
I did not go because my foot was jammed somehow in the well of the boat, but the wrench nearly pulled my thigh-bone out of its socket. I had hardly released my foot, when, towering above me, came the colossal head of the great creature, as he ploughed through the bundle of debris that had just been a boat. There was an appalling roar of water in my ears, and darkness that might be felt all around.
"I see you have found the left thigh-bone," I remarked, observing that this did not appear in the list. "Yes," said the sergeant; "that turned up yesterday evening in a big pond called Baldwin's Pond in the Sand-pit plain, near Little Monk Wood." "Is that near here?" I asked. "In the forest up Loughton way," was the reply.
Thank heavens, his great teeth had not crushed my thigh-bone; but I was losing a great deal of blood, and had it not been for the timely arrival of Tom, with whose aid I got the handkerchief from my wrist and tied it round my leg, twisting it tight with a stick, I think that I should have bled to death. "Well, it was a just reward for my folly in trying to tackle a family of lions single-handed.
They were really hideous to look upon. Their eyes were swimming low in their heads, and they glared about as if they were half starved. They offered Grasshopper something to eat, which he politely refused, for he had a strong suspicion that it was the thigh-bone of a man. "What have you come for?" said the old one. "Nothing," answered Grasshopper; "where is your uncle?"
About the same time lived the first of the long line of daring practical aviators, without whom success would never have been achieved, one John Damian, a physician of the Court of James IV of Scotland, who "took in hand to fly with wings, and to that effect caused make a pair of wings of feathers, which being fastened upon him, he flew off the castle wall of Stirling, but shortly he fell to the ground and brake his thigh-bone."
It is a masterpiece of art. But we have no time to examine it now. Delicacy forbids that I should amplify at a juncture like this" casting an almost benignant glance toward the patient, now beginning to open his eyes; "but let me point out to you upon this thigh-bone" disengaging it from the skeleton, with a gentle twist "the precise place where I propose to perform the operation.
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