38 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



Pfitzner has made a great number of observations 

 as to the condition of this member, and has found 

 that in 31 per cent, of males and 41.5 per cent, of 

 females the two terminal bones are fused into one, 

 which is very little, if at all, larger than the ter- 

 minal bone should be. Nor was this phenomenon 

 confined to adults; he found it equally common in 

 children, and even in infants. Whether the process 

 will continue until the fifth toe disappears we cannot 

 say, but, knowing what we do of evolution, there is 

 every reason to think so. The second case which I 

 shall mention, is the gradual disappearance of the 

 wisdom-tooth in civilised man. It is clear that civi- 

 lised man does not require the strength of jaw and 

 amount of grinding surface he did before he discovered 

 how much jaw- labour could be done by knives and 

 forks and cookery, and as evolutionists we would 

 expect to find in him jaws and teeth less powerfully 

 developed than in his still savage brother. And that 

 is exactly what we do find. In all savage races we 

 find the whole masticatory apparatus, bones, teeth, 

 and muscles, much better, that is, more strongly 

 developed than in the civilised races. More than this, 

 we find that as the jaws develop less fully the last 

 tooth, the wisdom-tooth, is dying out. Mantegazza 

 in a long series of observations found the wisdom-teeth 

 absent in 19 per cent, of members of the lower races, 

 while they are absent in 42 per cent, of civilised man- 

 kind. Now both these conditions are acquired, the 

 absence of the teeth and the atrophy of the toe, and 



