He gives
himself no material for reconsideration. But you don't mean that these
egg-patches and worm-tubes appeared to you to have no significance at
all?"
"Oh, of course, they show the position in which the bones were lying."
"Exactly. The arm was lying, fully extended, with the dorsal side
uppermost. There is nothing remarkable in that. But we also learn from
these egg-patches that the hand had been separated from the arm before
it was thrown into the pond; and there is something very remarkable in
that."
I leaned over his shoulder and gazed at my sketches, amazed at the
rapidity with which he had reconstructed the limb from my rough drawings
of the individual bones.
"I don't quite see how you arrived at it, though," I said.
"Well, look at your drawings. The egg-patches are on the dorsal surface
of the scapula, the humerus, and the bones of the fore-arm. But here you
have shown six of the bones of the hand: two metacarpals, the os magnum,
and three phalanges; and they all have egg-patches on the _palmar_
surface.
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