22G 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



traits that age and perhaps other circumstances, and, moreover, even in- 

 dividual conditions, cause considerably to vary. Amongst the specimens 

 in the gallery of the Museum, I have found that in one head of an Esqui- 

 maux it is perhaps much greater than in the jaw from Abbeville, whilst in 

 another head of the same race it is nearly straight. I have elsewhere 

 found in different races other examples of an angle as obtuse, and of ana- 

 logous variations. A fresh study and exact measurements taken of many 

 individuals of different ages and races are still necessary. 



" Is the inclination of the tooth a race -character ? It is easy to answer 

 this question by examining the alveoles of the incisors still intact. These 

 prove a vertical implantation. The inclination of the incisors has certainly 

 nothing different from what we observe in races the most strongly ortho- 

 gnathous. This is a very important fact, for it tends to resolve a contested 

 question. Some anthropologists, amongst whom are men that I respect 

 equally for their judgment and science, have thought that the negros — 

 that is to say, races essentially prognathic — should be nearer the primitive 

 type of humanity, and that the superior races have taken their birth 

 through a progressive development ; that they are, in consequence, poste- 

 rior to the negro. Now in 1861, in my lectures at the Museum, I laboured 

 to show that present science furnished but few facts, and those vague and 

 conjectural, on the characters possessed by primitive man ; but that it 

 permitted us to specify, almost with certainty, some of those which he did 

 not possess. In dwelling upon the phenomena of Atavism, and on the prin- 

 ciples of philology, I believed I was able to affirm that the negro race was 

 not the first to appear ; that the white, however high he might carry back 

 his genealogy, would never find the negro amongst his ancestors. The 

 orthognathism of the Abbeville fossil adds one argument to, and more serious 

 than those which I had then estimated. The man to whom this jaw be- 

 longed was the contemporary of elephants and rhinoceroses which have 

 become extinct, if we may admit the opinion of many eminent geologists. 

 In any case, it remains at present the representative of the most ancient 

 races known ; and nothing in the disposition of his teeth indicates that 

 prognathism which is the essential character of all the negro races, and 

 which they transmit in inter-breeds with such great persistence. 



" I believe myself, then, more and more authorized to repeat, that the 

 negro and the white represent the extreme modifications of a primitive 

 type which was placed somewhere between the two. As to the inclina- 

 tion of the molar in the Abbeville fossil, there is certainly nothing charac- 

 teristic in it. On the one hand, I have found analogous facts in many 

 heads of differeut races in the collections of the Museum. On the other 

 hand, the inclination appears to me to be here the result of an accident. 

 The molar placed in front of that which remains had fallen out while the 

 individual was living. The alveolus has been filled up by the process of 

 ossification which takes place in that case. One comprehends that, before 

 this filling in, the tooth placed behind the void could be pushed or drawn 

 easily in the direction where it no longer finds the usual support. 



"Dr. Falconer, with whom 1" had the advantage of examining the jaw, 

 w-as forcibly struck with the following peculiarity. The edge of the angle 

 of the jaw and the posterior portion of the inferior border of the horizontal 

 ramus curved slightly inwards. The internal base of the bone presented 

 thus, below the oblique line, a sort of canal, or rather of large gutter, ex- 

 tending as far as the vicinity of tin? chin, and sensibly more pronounced than 

 it was in a modern jaw placed by a dentist at our service. I have sought 

 in t his respect for facts which might be afforded by the gallery of anthro- 

 pology. I have found very marked traces of inversion inwards of the 



