226 
TUE GEOLOGIST. 
traits that age and perhaps other ch'cumstances, and, moreover, even in- 
dividual conditions, cause considerably to vary. Amongst the specimen.s 
in the gallery of the Museum, T 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 humanit3% 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 tliose 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 \T hich 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 analogoiis facts in many 
heads of different 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 tlie 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 here it no longer finds the usual support. 
"Dr Falconer, with whom I had the advantage of exan)ining the jaw, 
was 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 the chin, and sensibly more pronounced than 
it was in a modern jaw placed by a dentist at our service. I have sought 
in this respect for facts which might be afforded by the gailerj' of anthro- 
pology. I have found very marked traces of inversion inwards of the 
