Hence the latter animal has been select ed as the emblem of the goddess of wis dom. The invaluable remains of Grecian art shew that the ancients were well ac quainted with these circumstances ; they were aware, that an elevated facial line formed one of the grand characters of beauty, and indicated a noble and generous nature. Hence they have extended the facial angle to 90 degrees in the represen tation of men, on whom they wished to bestow an august character. And in the representation of their gods and heroes, they have even carried it beyond a right angle, and made it 100°.
It must, however, be allowed, that the facial angle is of chief importance in its application to the cranium of the human subject, and of the quadrumana: as vari ous. circumstances affect the conclusions which would result from employing it in other classes of mammalia. Thus, in the carnivorous, and some of the ruminating animals ; in the pig, and particularly in the elephant, the great size of the frontal sinuses produces an undue elevation of the facial line. In many of the rodentia, as the hare, &c. the riose occupies so large a space, that the cranium is thrown quite back, and presents no-point on a front view, from which this line can be drawn.
The following are the angles formed by drawing a line along the floor of the nos trils, and intersecting it by another, which touches the anterior margin of the Tipper alveoli, and the convexity of the cranium, (whether the latter point be concealed by the face or no ;) European infant 900 adult 85Adult negro . . . .
Orang•outang 67° Long-tailed monkies . . 65 1aboons 40 to 30 Pole-cat 31 Pug-dog 35 Mastiff; the line passing along the outer surface of the 41 skull Ditto ; inner ditto '30 Leopard ; inner surface . . 28 Hare 30 Ram 30 Horse 23 Porpoise 25 In the third and fourth tables of Cu vier's " Tableau Elementaire del'Histoire Naturelle," the crania of several main malia are represented in profile, so as to afford a sufficient general notion of the varieties in the facial angle. A similar comparative view, in one plate, is given by White, in his account of the "Regu lar Gradation," Sec. from the work of Camper.
A vertical section of the head, in the longitudinal direction, shews its more com pletely the relative proportions of the cra nium and face. In the European, the area of the section of the cranium is four times as large as that of the face ; the lower jaw not being included. The proportion of
the face is somewhat larger in the ne gro : and it increases again in the orang outang. The area of the cranium is about double that of the face in the monkeys ; in the baboons, and in some of the carni vorous mammalia, the two parts are nearly equal. The face exceeds the cra nium in most of the other classes. Among the rodentia, the hare and marmot have it one third larger ; in the porcupine and the ruminantia, the area of the face is about double that of the cranium ; nearly triple in the hippopotamus ; and almost four times as large in the horse. In rep tiles and fishes, the cranium forms a very inconsiderable portion of the section of the head, although it is considerably lar ger than the brain which it contains.
The outline of the face, when viewed in such a section as we have just mentioned, forms in the human subject a triangle, the longest side of which is the line of junc tion between the cranium and face. This extends obliquely, backwards and down wards, from the root of the nose towards the foramen occipitale. The front of the face, or the anterior line of the triangle, is the shortest of the three. The face is so much elongated, even in the simix, that the line of junction of the cranium and face is the shortest side of the trian gle, and the anterior one the longest. These proportions become still more con siderable in other mammalia.
The upper jaw-bones of other mam malia do not, as in man, touch each other under the nose, and contain all the upper teeth ; but they are separated by a pecu liar, single, or double intermaxillary bone, which is in a manner locked between the former, and holds the incisor teeth of such animals as are provided with these i teeth. It exists also in the pecora, which have no incisor teeth in the upper jaw ; as well as in such genera as have no in cisor teeth at all ; viz. the duck-billed ani mal and the armadillo. It is even found in those mammalia which are wholly des titute of teeth ; as the ant-eater and the proper whales. It is joined to the neigh bouring bones by sutures, which run ex teriorly by the side of the nose and snout, and which pass towards the palate, close to the foramina incisiva. Its form and magnitude vary surprisingly in several orders and genera of mammalia. It is small in many ferx ; as also in the walrus. In the glires it is remarkably large, on ac count of the immense size of their incisor teeth.