372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of a workaday life, it is doubtful if these pictures will be re- 

 garded with any reverence or affection by our posterity from a 

 merely sentimental point of view. But this would be changed if 

 photographs were, as should be all photographs which aim to 

 give a true picture of the face, taken just two ways profile and 

 full face. They would then be of scientific value ; and even a 

 dilettante scientific amateur of the future would esteem a family 

 collection as something of interest for the lessons in evolution or 

 anthropology it might teach : perchance, the theme might be the 

 " Inheritance of Acquired Characters." The want of such photo- 

 graphs at the present day makes it extremely difficult to impress 

 upon the layman or to prove to the scientist how much people 

 change facially during life. Three-quarter views give but a feeble 

 idea of the development. Nothing is more remarkable than a 

 comparison of the same-sized profile views of the same person at 

 six and at thirty years of age : the growth of the nose and the 

 development of the forehead are so great that the jaws appear to 

 have diminished in size ; and this is really what the jaws have 

 done, in proportion to the whole face. 



It is a fond delusion with visitors and nurses that the baby is 

 just like its father or mother. No one who has had that scien- 

 tific training necessary to x^roper observation could make such a 

 statement. It is a gross libel, sometimes on the baby, sometimes 

 on the parents. Properly taken photographs show that the pro- 

 portions of nearly every feature in the face of a baby and an 

 adult are entirely different ; but the greatest difference exists in 

 the size and shape of the nose, and the size of the jaws. If, when 

 adult, we had features like our babies, we should have a counte- 

 nance of a negroid type. Except positive evidence be available, 

 it would hardly be credible that the small-jawed, long and 

 prominent-nosed individual, with high forehead, was in baby- 

 hood prognathous, short and snub-nosed, with a remarkably re- 

 ceding forehead. The difference resulting from the change dur- 

 ing life as shown by two photographs reduced to the same size, 

 not the same proportion, is greater than the difference between 

 many species; yet the very fact of such metabolism and the pos- 

 sibility of its earlier transmission from generation to generation 

 may be the basis of specific mutation, without calling in the aid 

 of natural, or sexual, or physiological selection to account for 

 that phenomenon. 



The prognathism of a child is less noticeable than it should 

 be, because such prognathism, owing to the disposition of weight, 

 alters the whole carriage of the head ; and the difference in the 

 method of carrying the head obscures the prognathism to a cer- 

 tain extent. Prognathism is a heritage from quadrupedal ances- 

 tors, and is a necessary result of the carriage of the head en- 



