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human races, which is afforded by the pre-maxillary bone, already 

 referred to. In the young orang-utan, even when the change of 

 dentition has begun, the suture between that bone and the 

 maxillary is present; and it is not until the large canine teeth are 

 developed, that the stimulus of the vascular system, in the con- 

 comitant expansion and growth of the alveoli, tends to obliterate 

 the suture. In the young chimpanzee, the maxillary suture dis- 

 appears earlier, at least on the facial surface of the upper jaw. In 

 the human subject those traces disappear still earlier, and in regard 

 to the exterior alveolar plates, the inter-maxillary and maxillary 

 bones are connate. But there may be always traced in the human 

 foetus the indications of the palatal and nasal portions of the 

 maxillo-intermaxillary suture, of which the poet Goethe was the 

 first to appreciate the full significance. 



In the Mongolian skull there is a peculiar development of the 

 cheek-bones, giving great breadth and flatness to the face, a broad 

 cranium, with a low forehead, and often with the sides sloping away 

 from the median sagittal tract, something like a roof; whereas, in 

 the European, there is combined, with greater capacity of the 

 cranium, a more regular and beautiful oval form, a loftier and 

 more expanded brow, a minor prominence of the malars, and a less 

 projection of the upper and lower jaws. All these characteristics 

 necessarily occasion slight differences in the facial angle. On a 

 comparison of the basis cranii, the strictly bimanous characteristics 

 in the position of the foramen magnum and occipital condyles, and 

 of the zygomatic arches, are as well displayed in the lowest as in the 

 highest varieties of the human species. 



With regard to the value to be assigned to the above defined 

 distinctions of race: in consequence of not any of these differences 

 being equivalent to those characteristics of the skeleton, or other 

 parts of the frame, upon which specific differences are founded by 

 naturalists in reference to the rest of the animal creation, I have 

 come to the conclusion that Man forms one species, and that these 

 differences are but indicative of varieties. As to the number of 

 these varieties : from the very well marked and natural character 

 of the species, just as in the case of the similarly natural and 

 circumscribed class of birds, scarcely any two ethnologists agree as to 

 the number of the divisions, or as to the characters upon which those 

 varieties are to be defined and circumscribed. In the subdivision 

 of the class of birds, the ornithological systems vary from two 

 orders to thirty orders; so with man there are classifications of 



