From your own observation you will at once grant me that noses vary as much as families; in fact I am inclined to think that there is a good deal to be said for Mr. Shandy’s philosophy of noses. The cartilages of the nose play a most important part in the shape of the organ, and demand your study as much as the bones. Each variation in the shape of the nose has a corresponding variety of upper lip, and the correlations between these two must be most carefully attended to. Granted that these differences are so numerous, you must admit that the nose must have primary importance in the estimate of the Dental Surgeon, when called upon to restore the lost Dental organs. I may remark that although I am examining noses every day of my life, I have never yet found one assuming a direct line with the other central lines of the head and face. To arrive at a just appreciation of the effect of these bones on the lines of the face you must examine them in the articulated skeleton, not in one instance but in many—fifty or even a hundred—make weekly visits to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and there examine all the specimens of articulated skulls and skeletons, until you fully grasp the meaning of comparative human anatomy—the size, the shape, the relative acuteness of angles, the proportions of the different parts. It is this relationship, the articulation of each bone with the other bones of the skull that is of primary importance to the Dental Surgeon. The last bone that I shall mention to you this evening is the lower jaw, perhaps the most important of all. You will all soon be taught that it has a body, a symphysis, a ramus with its condyle, coronoid process and sigmoid notch, an alveolar process, and various tubercles, ridges, spines, grooves, and depressions. But beyond all such facts, be at pains to notice, gentlemen, how all these various parts differ in different specimens. The changes in the angle of the bone that are met with at different ages are notorious, but you will have to learn that the angle of every adult differs, that each form of countenance has its special maxillary angle, nor are the depth, thickness, curve, obliquity and relative prominence of different parts of the bone one whit more constant, and if you would succeed in fitting artificial dentures to a lower jaw, these individual peculiarities of the bone must be carefully studied.