356 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



ARTIFICIAL DEFORMATION OF THE TEETH. 



At the meeting of the Anthropological Society of Gottin- 

 gen, July 17, 1875, Dr. Von Jhering, after a brief mention of 

 practices common among people widely separated, especially 

 their barbarous toilet operations, gave a minute description 

 of deformations of the teeth. These practices are of three 

 kinds : 1. Coloring the teeth with red and black dyes (Borneo 

 and Burma). 2. Knocking out one or more incisors of the 

 upper or the under jaw by some tribes of Australia and of 

 Central Africa. 3. Disfiguring the teeth without removing 

 them. Many tribes of Central Africa chip the incisors with 

 the chisel so as to make them pointed, sometimes in the cen- 

 tre, sometimes on one, sometimes on both sides. In the lat- 

 ter case they are bicuspidate. In the islands of the Malayan 

 Archipelago the aborigines practice the filing down of their 

 teeth, already discolored by the chewing of betel, in two 

 typical fashions : 1. Removal of the enamel from the whole 

 front surface of the crown by horizontal strokes of the file, 

 and by smoothing down the edge a species of mutilation 

 characteristic of the Malays of the East Indian Archipelago. 

 2. A removal of the enamel in triangular pieces so as to leave 

 the tooth pointed, and the remaining enamel rhomboidal in 

 form. This is practiced in Java, Bali, Madura, and Celebes, 

 and is not known elsewhere, so that Virchow, A. B. Meyer, 

 and others believe it to be an exclusive mark of these islands. 

 Dr. Von Jhering has observed this mark upon crania in vari- 

 ous collections, but they have always proved to be from one 

 of these four islands. We must therefore conclude that this 

 species of mutilation had its origin there, although we have 

 not the least suspicion to which people it belonged, or whether 

 it was a mark of noble birth. 



COMPARATIVELY SMALL BRAIN IN EXTINCT ANIMALS. 



The study of the form of the brain in extinct animals is 

 one of much interest, and has been prosecuted with consid- 

 erable success lately. Some years ago Professor Lartet, of 

 Paris, pointed out the small size of the brain in Eocene 

 mammalia as compared with those of the present time. 

 Professor Gervais has described the characters presented by 

 the skull-cast in Toxodon a remarkable and gigantic ani- 



