188 THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MIRANDA. 



from an old filthy sealskin, which is a garment worn by the 

 Eskimos in stormy weather and used as a travelling-bag when 

 off duty. I trailed the fish overboard (which caused my com- 

 panion to smile), and then let it dry, and began to pick at it. 

 It was not bad ; in fact, I thought it very good before I had 

 eaten the entire piece (about three pounds), and realized how 

 easy it would be to fall into the habit of eating the uncooked 

 food as the Eskimos do. 



Before leaving New York I purchased ninety dozen Seed's 

 dry plates for my camera from E. W. Newcomb & Co., and 

 twenty boxes of their developing powders. On our trip north, 

 in Labrador and Greenland, I had exposed three hundred 

 and ninety-two plates and developed them on shipboard, mak- 

 ing a dai'k room of our stateroom. 



The loss of these plates, of course, I regret very much ; but 

 the greatest loss to me was the casts I had taken, twenty-eighl 

 in number, of the Eskimo teeth, from childhood to old age. 

 Duplicates of these casts I expected to place with others 

 I have in the National Medical Museum, at Washington, 

 D. C, as there they could always have been referred to in the 

 scientific study of the teeth. 



Years ago it was reported by sailors that the Eskimos had 

 double teeth all round — that is, the front teeth looked the 

 same as the back ones. It did not take me long to discover 

 the reason of this report. Upon observation, as a dentist, I 

 ascertained that the incisor teeth, also the cuspids and bicus- 

 pids, were worn off blunt. As these teeth were large and 

 prominent, they did not look unlike molar teeth. 



The older natives live entirely on fish and flesh uncooked, 

 and they do not chew their food, but swallow it like a dog. 

 This accounts for the way their teeth, as a rule, articulate, 

 square on the end of the incisor teeth, the molar teeth not 

 being used at all as masticators. In preparing bird and other 

 skins, the natives chew or work the skins between their front 



