BY N. DE MIKLOUnO-MACLAY. 683 



during winch, as alread}' mentioned, I succeeded in making further 

 investigation on " Macrodontism." 



As it was now my third visit to these Islands (Admiralty and 

 Lub Islands), the natives treated me as an old acquaintance, 

 especially as I could speak a little of their dialect. Living on 

 shore, my face, manners and ways became quite familiar to the 

 natives, who remembered my two former visits very well. Finding 

 by experience that my proceedings (anthropological measurements, 

 sketching, photographing, etc., etc.), were quite harmless, the 

 natives began to regard them with much less distrust and antipathy 

 than before, and many large-toothed people had their teeth ex- 

 amined, measured, and sketched without making any objection. 

 This time I examined a greater variety of the large teeth and 

 succeeded in getting some pieces of the same, and soon arrived at 

 a different opinion to my former one (1), namely, that the enlarge- 

 ment of the teeth is due not to a real enlargement of the tooth (an 

 hypertrophy of the dentinum), but is simply an excessive accumic- 

 lation of tartar, the formation of which is increased by the constant 

 supply of lime from the chewing of the areca-betel-lime combina- 

 tion (2). The examination of a large tooth, which I purchased, left 

 no doubt that the same was covered with a kind of black, hard 

 incrustation, which could be gradually removed with a sharp 

 scalpel in the shape of more or less thin layers, leaving the 

 apparently unaltered tooth in the centre. In another specimen, the 

 tooth could be removed like a kernel from a nutshell. 



I showed one of the specimens of the enlarged testh to Mr. P. 

 E. Pedley, who expressed his conviction that the dark brown crust 

 on the teeth could not be anything else, but a salivary calculus, 

 peculiarly stained by the special food of the natives. 



(1) Log. cit. Proceed. Linn. Soc. of N.S.W., Vol. 1, p. 172. 



(2) The root of the Piper betel is used by the natives of Admii-alty Islands 

 to a greater extent than in other places, where the leaves and fruits are 

 mostly in demand. The proportion of different ingredients used by areca- 

 betel-lime-chewers, appeared to me very different in different countries, which 

 differences in the combination of course alters the immediate effect of the 

 chewing, and producesintime different results on the bodies of the indulgers. 

 Moreover, in some places (for instance, the Malay-Peninsula and some 

 Islands of the Malay Archipelago) Tobacco and Ganibier (Nauclea gambir) 

 are added to the Areca nut and the Betel. 



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