Line	Micro-wear patterns found on the teeth of long-
	extinct specimens of the primate species
	australopithecine may provide evidence about their
	diets. For example, on the basis of tooth micro-wear
(5)	patterns, Walker dismisses Jolly’s hypothesis that
	australopithecines ate hard seeds. He also disputes
	Szalay’s suggestion that the heavy enamel of
	australopithecine teeth is an adaptation to bone
	crunching, since both seed cracking and bone
(10)	crunching produce distinctive micro-wear
	characteristics on teeth. His conclusion that
	australopithecines were frugivores (fruit eaters) is
	based upon his observation that the tooth micro-
	wear characteristics of east African
(15)	australopithecine specimens are indistinguishable
	from those of chimpanzees and orangutans, which
	are commonly assumed to be frugivorous primates.
	However, research on the diets of
	contemporary primates suggests that micro-wear
(20)	studies may have limited utility in determining the
	foods that are actually eaten. For example, insect
	eating, which can cause distinct micro-wear
	patterns, would not cause much tooth abrasion in
	modern baboons, who eat only soft-bodied insects
(25)	rather than hard-bodied insects. In addition, the
	diets of current omnivorous primates vary
	considerably depending on the environments that
	different groups within a primate species inhabit; if
	australopithecines were omnivores too, we might
(30)	expect to find considerable population variation in
	their tooth micro-wear patterns. Thus, Walker’s
	description of possible australopithecine diets may
	need to be expanded to include a much more
	diverse diet.

  Colonial historian David Allen's intensive study of five communities in seventeenth-century Massachusetts is a model of meticulous scholarship on the detailed microcosmic level, and is convincing up to a point. Allen suggests that much more coherence and direct continuity existed between English and colonial agricultural practices and administrative organization than other historians have suggested. However, he overstates his case with the declaration that he has proved ''the remarkable extent to which diversity in New England local institutions was directly imitative of regional differences in the mother country."
  Such an assertion ignores critical differences between seventeenth-century England and New England. First, England was overcrowded and land-hungry; New England was sparsely populated and labor-hungry. Second, England suffered the normal European rate of mortality; New England, especially in the first generation of English colonists, was virtually free from infectious diseases. Third, England had an all-embracing state church; in New England membership in a church was restricted to the elect. Fourth, a high proportion of English villagers lived under paternalistic resident squires; no such class existed in New England. By narrowing his focus to village institutions and ignoring these critical differences, which studies by Greven, Demos, and Lockridge have shown to be so important, Allen has created a somewhat distorted picture of reality.
  Allen's work is a rather extreme example of the ''country community" school of seventeenth-century English history whose intemperate excesses in removing all national issues from the history of that period have been exposed by Professor Clive Holmes. What conclusion can be drawn, for example, from Allen's discovery that Puritan clergy who had come to the colonies from East Anglia were one-third to one-half as likely to return to England by 1660 as were Puritan ministers from western and northern England? We are not told in what way, if at all, this discovery illuminates historical understanding. Studies of local history have enormously expanded our horizons, but it is a mistake for their authors to conclude that village institutions are all that mattered, simply because their functions are all that the records of village institutions reveal.