806 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



centrated preparations, of bolted flour, and pies and cakes, came a 

 time when the teeth had few offices to perform, and they began to 

 decay for want of employment. To use a labor-phrase, they were 

 " out of work. " 



The fact that father and mother have poor teeth descends to the 

 children with even more surety than a deficiency of hair. Dentists 

 inform me that fully one half of their youthful patrons never shed 

 their " milk " molars. They remain in the jaws (or on them) until 

 the possessor is from twenty to thirty years of age, and then decay 

 and come out, or are pulled, to make room for " store " teeth. Owing 

 to this habit, many a person who has a good-looking set of canines 

 and incisors is without a single molar. Wisdom-teeth, that come at 

 full maturity and mark the age of manhood and womanhood, are usu- 

 ally short-lived, and frequently show specks of decay as soon as they 

 appear. Mankind do not use teeth, and so the teeth disappear. 



Looking at the facts as presented, there can be but one conclusion 

 regarding the coming man. If the present state of things continues, 

 he will be bald-headed and toothless. From all indications, the time 

 when this kind of a coming man will be here is but a few generations 

 away. 



- 



LIFE ON A CORAL ISLAND.* 



By Professob W. K. BKOOKS. 



AFTER the discovery of the Bahama Islands, Columbus writes to 

 Queen Isabella that " this country as far surpasses all other lands 

 in beauty as the day exceeds the night in brilliancy " ; and as the scien- 

 tific expedition of the Johns Hopkins University approached these 

 islands, and the beauties of the land and sea and sky of the tropics 

 began to unfold themselves before our eyes, all the members of our 

 party echoed, in words of their own, the impression of the great ex- 

 plorer. 



We had been shut up for nineteen days in a little schooner, smaller 

 than those in which Columbus made his first voyage, in a hold which 

 did not allow us to stand erect, with no floor except a few rough 

 boards laid on the ballast of broken stone. We had found an endless 

 source of pleasure and profit- in the examination of the marine animals 

 which drifted by us in the floating sargassum of the Gulf Stream, and 

 we had seen for ourselves what we had so often read, that the ocean 

 is the true home of animal life, and that the life of the land is as noth- 



* This interesting sketch of what a party of enthusiastic working naturalists saw 

 outside their laboratory, during a recent visit to the Bermudas, first appeared in the 

 " Baltimore Sun." As it is well worthy a more permanent record than the columns of a 

 daily newspaper can afford, we gladly reprint it from slips kindly sent us by the author. 

 The Editors. 



