the fate of Phalaris,--that he should find himself condemned as
unlifeworthy upon the basis of his own observations,--he would very
certainly become the object of eternal hatred to the proprietors of all
the semi-organizations which he felt obliged to condemn. It consists in
the study of the laws of physical degeneration,--the stages and
manifestations of the process by which Nature dismantles the complete and
typical human organism, until it becomes too bad for her own sufferance,
and she kills it off before the advent of the reproductive period, that it
may not permanently depress her average of vital force by taking part in
the life of the race. There are many signs that fall far short of the
marks of cretinism,--yet just as plain as that is to the _visus
eruditus_,--which one meets every hour of the day in every circle of
society. Many of these are partial arrests of development. We do not care
to mention all which we think may be recognized, but there is one which we
need not hesitate to speak of from the fact that it is so exceedingly
common.

The vertical part of the lower jaw is short, and the angle of the jaw is
obtuse, in infancy. When the physical development is complete, the lower
jaw, which, as the active partner in the business of mastication, must be
developed in proportion to the vigor of the nutritive apparatus, comes
down by a rapid growth which gives the straight-cut posterior line and the
bold right angle so familiar to us in the portraits of pugilists,
exaggerated by the caricaturists in their portraits of fighting men, and
noticeable in well-developed persons of all classes. But in imperfectly
grown adults the jaw retains the infantile character,--the short vertical
portion necessarily implying the obtuse angle. The upper jaw at the same
time fails to expand laterally: in vigorous organisms it spreads out
boldly, and the teeth stand square and with space enough; whereas in
subvitalized persons it remains narrow, as in the child, so that the large