CARNIVORES. 473 



him, in the lowest condition of savage life, with weapons more 

 formidable than sharp and long canine teeth, and his mastery over 

 fire, the prime element of cookery, enables him to dispense with 

 strong and prominent incisors in the reduction of the tough, raw, 

 and indigestible parts of vegetable or animal food. 



But the moderate and equable development of the anterior 

 teeth, and the graceful continuous curve which they form with 

 the molar series, have not merely a negative relation to the sub- 

 stitutes which Man's inventive faculty provides for the absence of 

 the large and strong incisors and canines of the Orangs. The 

 smooth and equable posterior surface of the incisors, their vertical 

 position and their close arrangement in a gentle curve with the 

 canines, offer the best conditions for reacting upon the tongue in 

 the various applications of that organ to the teeth during speech. 

 The appearance of the teeth in the mouth is contemporaneous 

 with the child's power of forming articulate sounds; and the clear- 

 ness of utterance is affected both by the temporary deficiency of 

 the incisive series during the change of dentition, and in a still 

 greater degree by the final loss of the teeth and their sockets in 

 old age. 



Lastly, the vertical symphysis of the human jaw not only 

 affords the most favourable position to the incisors in relation to 

 speech, but is accompanied in the highest races with a promi- 

 nence of the lower border forming the chin, which is wanting in 

 every inferior animal : and this remarkable feature, with the short 

 jaws proportioned to the small incisors and canines, harmoniously 

 combine with the capacious forehead in stamping the head of Man 

 with the impress of his intellectual superiority. 



CHAPTER XI. 



TEETH OF CARNIVORA. 



178. — Having completed in Man the survey of the dental 

 system of Omnivorous Mammalia, I next proceed to consider the 

 stronger-featured modifications of those preparatory digestive organs 



