THIRD DAY'S SITTING. 61 



and they have only two separate fangs. They do not cut 

 through the gums till about the seventeenth year, and I 

 am assured by dentists that they are much more liable to 

 decay, and are earlier lost than the other teeth. It is also 

 remarkable that they are much more liable to vary, both in 

 structure and in the period of their development, than the 

 other teeth. In the Melanian races, on the other hand, the 

 wisdom teeth aie usually furnished with three separate 

 fangs, and are generally sound ; they also differ from the 

 other molars in size less than in the Caucasian races. 

 Professor Schaaffhausen accounts for this difference between 

 the races, by * the posterior dental portion of the jaw being 

 always shortened ' in those that are civilized ; and this 

 shortening may, I presume, be safely attributed to civilized 

 men habitually feeding on soft, cooked food, and thus using 

 their jaws less. I am informed by Mr. Brace that it is 

 becoming quite a common practice, in the United States, 

 to remove some of the molar teeth of children, as the jaw 

 does not grow large enough for the perfect development of 

 the normal number." (Vol. i. pp. 26, 27.) 



Homo. Admitting, my Lord, the correctness of Mr. 

 Darwin's statement regarding our wisdom-teeth, I do not 

 see that it at all helps his argument. Our tetih may 

 resemble those of the chimpanzee or the orang, as the 

 result of our having an animal nature like theirs, with- 

 out our being blood relations of these animals. As for 

 the teeth and jaws of civilized man becoming somewhat 

 - modified by their " habitually feeding on soft, cooked food," 

 what has this to do, I should like to know, with our being 

 descended from apes ? No one doubts that man's physical 

 structure is, to use Mr. Darwin's own words, "eminently 

 variable," and that this variation arises, in part, from causes 

 connected with our peculiar civilization. Will Mr. Darwin 



