156' CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN TEETH. 



because, being the great instruments of dividing the food, 

 they correspond to the kind of nourishment which the 

 animal naturally takes. Their surface does not resemble 

 the flat crowns with rising ridges of intermixed enamel be- 

 longing to our common herbivorous animals ; nor are they 

 like the cutting and tearing grinders of the carnivora; but 

 they are well adapted to that mixed diet prepared by the 

 arts of cookery, which man has always resorted to, when 

 he could get it, and when his natural inclinations have not 

 been thwarted by the interference of religious scruples or 

 prohibitions, nor opposed by his own whims and fancies. 



The lower jaw of man is distinguished by the prominence 

 of the chin, a necessary consequence of the inferior incisors 

 being perpendicular ; by its shortness '^, and by the oblong 

 convexity and obliquity of the condyles. 



CHAPTER V. 



Differences between Man and Animals, in Stature , Proportions, 

 and some other points. 



The height of the whole body, and the proportions of its 

 several parts, afford important points of comparison in ex- 

 amining the specific differences between man and the most 

 anthropo-morphous simiae. 



The difference of stature is remarkable. Of the orang- 

 utangs or chimpanses hitherto brought into Europe, none 



* The length of the inferior maxilla is one-fourth of that of the trunk from 

 the vertex to the anus, in the simia satyrus; it is one-seventh in man. 



The elephant is equally remarkable with man for the shortness of the lower 

 jaw, of which a considerable portion projects in front of the teeth. This 

 cannot properly be deemed a chin. The incisors and cuspidati do not exist 

 in the lower jaw of this animal : the projection in question is the part, which 

 in other cases is occupied by those teeth. 



