150 Thomas Henry Huxley 



eye-teeth are relatively smaller in the gorilla than in 

 primitive mammals ; the}' are still smaller in the lower 

 races of man ; while in ordinary civilised man they do 

 not project above the others. The shortening of the 

 jaw is still proceeding, and, although in lower races of 

 man the last molar or wisdom tooth is almost as large 

 as the molars in front of it, in the higher races the wis- 

 dom tooth is much smaller and frequently does not de- 

 velop at all, or begins to decay ver}' soon after its 

 appearance. If the process of extinction of lower races 

 were to proceed much further, so that civilised white 

 races became the only human inhabitants of the earth, 

 then the gap between the Anthropoids and Man would 

 be wider than it now is; man would be characterised by 

 the presence of one tooth less than the anthropoids, just 

 as the anthropoids and some lower monke5'S are char- 

 acterised by having one tooth less than monkeys still 

 lower. 



In all, the nostrils have a narrow partition and look 

 downwards as in man. The arms are alwa3-s longer 

 than the legs, the difference being greatest in the orang 

 and least in the chimpanzee. We know^ now that in 

 the lower races of man, the arms are proportionately 

 longer than in higher races, and it has recently been 

 shewn that, although there is a general proportion be- 

 tween the length of the long bones and the height of 

 the whole body in man, so that the height may be cal- 

 culated with an average error from these bones, yet the 

 probable error is greater when the calculation is made 

 from the arms than when it is made from the legs. In 

 fact, the length of arm as compared to the length of leg 

 and to whole height is a more variable feature in man 

 than the length of leg. 



In all the anthropoids, the forelimbs end in hands 



