708 GENERAL REMARKS 



in the bifidity of the human canine fang ; and though we may 

 speak of them, therefore, as ' anthropoid/ we cannot speak of it as 

 ' pithecoid/ To my thinking a fair expression of the facts may 

 be given by saying, the interchangeability of form which exists 

 between ' canines ' and ' premolars,' but which ordinarily requires 

 for its illustration the comparison of two distinct species, is exem- 

 plified by different varieties within the limits of our own single 

 species. If in this instance we have to go as far afield as are such 

 animals as Galeopithecus^ Erinaceus, and Talpa, to understand how a 

 so-called 'canine' can become ( premolariform ' and develope two 

 fangs, it is but one instance out of many which show that many 

 questions in anthropology can be read only in the light furnished 

 by comparative anatomy *. 



I have not observed in these series any wisdom teeth with that 

 larger development which is so commonly noticeable in the dental 

 series of Australians as compared even with other black races, not 

 to say with Europeans. Rather indeed the reverse, the wisdom 

 teeth being often very small, especially in female skulls of the 

 earlier series. Nor in spite of the grinding down which is so 

 marked a feature in many of these skulls, as for example in the 

 skull of the woman from Cissbury, described by me in the Journal 

 of the Anthropological Institute, vol. vi. p. 34, have I ever observed 

 the eruption of these teeth to have been provoked, as is sometimes 

 the case in savage races, into taking precedence of the union by 

 ossification of the occipital and sphenoid bones. Such precedence 

 has been noted by Professor Broca 2 in one of the Cro-Magnon 

 skulls ; and from his comparison of the skulls of various modern 

 savages between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five with skulls 

 of modern Europeans at the same period of life, it results that this 

 peculiarity must be considered as a mark of degradation. 



Several other notes of inferiority which are commonly found in 

 savage races of modern days, and which have been described as 

 existing in the remains of troglodytic man, are wanting in the 

 neolithic skeletons which I have examined. Foremost amongst 



1 For a philosophical discussion of the homologies and nomenclature and the inter- 

 changeability of form in mammalian teeth, see Messrs. Moseley and Lankester, 

 Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, Nov. 1868, ser. ii. No. iii. p. 73, and Mr. C. S. 

 Tomes, Manual of Dental Anatomy, 1876, p. 260. 



2 See Revue d'Anthropologie, 1873, ii. p. 20. Dr. Barnard Davis in his ' Thesaurus 

 Craniorum/ 1867, p. 309, observes of a Loyalty islander, ' set. c. 25/ that ' the syn- 

 chondrosis sphenobasilaris is not quite ossified, yet all the teeth have been cut.' This 

 is the ordinary sequence in the lower animals. 



