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On the Human Mouth. By ALEXANDER Nasmytii, Esq. 

 Communicated for the Edinburgh New Philosophical 

 Journal by the Ethnological Society.* 



Glancing at the different degrees of development in Man 

 which come within notice, and the various features found to 

 be prevalent, and made use of, with a view to characterize 

 the varieties of Man, we find them to be very great, and to 

 produce much diversity of appearance. 



When we observe the difference between the European 

 and the Negro in colour ; the long, flowing, light-coloured 

 hair of the Caucasian, and the black woolly hair of the Ne- 

 gro; the well-balanced, elevated, and finely- symmetrical 

 cranium of the Caucasian ; the extremely prominent and 

 well-furnished mouth of the Negro, and the pinched perpen- 

 dicular mouth, supplied with irregularly-arranged and imper- 

 fectly-organized teeth, of social life — the question may well 

 be asked. Has Man descended from a state of perfection, or 

 risen from a low and deficient condition of development ? 



The arguments which have been advanced on this subject 

 have generally tended towards the adoption of one or other 

 extreme in the scale of development, with a view to solve 

 the difficulties regarding the original stock whence mankind 

 have sprung. Here we must exclusively take into considera- 

 tion possibilities, and these so far only as they are consistent 

 with the experience and evidence of facts within our reach. 

 We have to contemplate the natural scene of existence into 

 which man must originally have been ushered. The deve- 

 lopment compatible with the due fulfilment of the exactions 

 required from such a being, in such a state of existence, must, 

 in my opinion, have been perfect, and one well balanced both 

 in its moral and physical attributes. A mind of morbid sensi- 

 bility, such as high cultivated social life in all ages presents, 

 would have sunk under the exactions inevitable in such a 

 state. It would not have been able to exert the requisite 

 force to combat them, and it would have been too sensitive 



• Read before the Ethnological Society, 23d April 1845. 

 VOL. XL. NO. LXXIX. — JANUARY 1846. L 



