260 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



if we count the 148 among the unsound as we are bound to do, 

 though most were still quite young ! What would the per- 

 centage have been after, say, they had passed the age of twenty, 

 assuming that defective milk teeth were replaced by defective 

 permanent teeth. 



I now give some figures from a paper by Mr Sidney Spokes 

 which show what equipment of teeth the English public school boy 

 has. Five hundred and sixty boys of an average age of thirteen 

 years and seven months were reported on. The figures refer 

 only to the permanent teeth, and therefore do not, strictly 

 speaking, present a companion picture to those last quoted. 

 " Only thirteen had sound dentures, but ten of these were in 

 boys under fourteen years, several of whom had not yet erupted 

 the bicuspids and second molars ; seventy-one had been made 

 'artificially sound.'" Among boys of the upper classes, then, 

 things are, if we make a rough comparison, as bad as they are 

 among pauper children. Only 2*3 per cent, had perfectly sound 

 teeth, and even in some of this small number unsoundness might 

 show itself when the bicuspids and second molars made their 

 appearance ! 1 



In pauper children the whole system may have been so reduced 

 by underfeeding during infancy, that the teeth may have been 

 affected, and the diet of the rich may not be always perfectly 

 judicious. But for the main cause of the defect we must look 

 elsewhere. Those who have bad teeth are no longer eliminated. 

 Dentists and cooks (I hope to be forgiven for coupling them to- 

 gether) have brought about this result. Adopting this view, we 

 explain deaf-muteness and defective teeth on the same principle. 

 Both are congenital defects. But in the former case the loss is 

 complete, in the latter only partial. Complete absence of teeth 

 would probably be accompanied by very imperfect development 

 of jaw, and no skill of dentistry could make it good. Moreover, 

 English cooks seem, many of them, anxious to retard the de- 

 terioration of the race by sending up joints in a state of barbarous 

 toughness. So that teeth are not- likely to disappear with the 

 rapidity with which a race of deaf-mutes might be formed. 



1 See Transactions of the School, Dentists' Society, vol. i. No. I. 



