PITHECANTHROPUS ERECTUS, ETC. 365 



purposes, and were therefore subservient for speech. The 

 arrangement of the mental lines in anthropoids is quite 

 different. They turn up in front of the inferior canine 

 teeth, and enclose between them a quadrilateral rough 

 surface corresponding to the triangular mental space of 

 man. In anthropoids this space retreats rapidly down- 

 wards and backwards, a feature in which fossil man re- 

 sembles apes much more than modern man, and shows also, 

 I think, that fossil man was less highly adapted for speech. 

 Other speech indications are the short wide almost 

 semicircular shape of the jaws, of the palate, and of the 

 dental series; the presence of an incisiform canine, the confor- 

 mation of the posterior aspect of the mandibular symphysial 

 region, and the prominence of the mylo-hyoid ridge. All 

 these indications are as well marked in the Spy and 

 Naulette as in many Australian jaws. The canines of the 

 Bengawan skull were probably incisiform, as we know from 

 the temporal ridges ; and the molar tooth strongly suggests 

 that it possessed a semicircular dental series. The evidences 

 of speech in the Bengawan skull are, however, strictly 



negative. 



11. THE TEETH OF FOSSIL MAN. 



Much stress has been put upon the conformation of the 

 teeth, as evidence of the line of descent, by Topinard 1 and 

 Cope. 2 Unfortunately, we know the teeth of fossil men 

 only by more or less worn specimens derived from the Spy, 

 Naulette, Bengawan, Schipka Engis, D'Arcy-sur-Cure and 

 Tilbury finds. The incisors, canines and premolars, al- 

 though of goodly size, offer no features dissimilar from 

 quite common forms of to-day. On the other hand the 



1 " L'Evolution des Molaires et des Premolaires chez les Primates et 

 en particular chez l'Homme," L' Anthropologic, tome iii., 1892, pp. 641- 

 710. 



2 " On the Tribercular Tooth in Human Dentition," Journal of 

 Morphology, vol. ii., pp. 1-24 ; also American Naturalist, vol. xx., pp. 941 

 and 947; also his paper on "The Genealogy of Man," American Naturalist, 

 vol. xxvii., p. 316. See also Forsyth Major's paper "On the Teeth of 

 Miocene Squirrels," Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1893. 



