COMMON ANOPLOTHERE. 433 
series with the premolars and true molars, which character 
is now manifested only in the human species. 
Amongst the varied forms of existing Herbivora we find 
certain teeth disproportionately developed, sometimes to a 
monstrous size; whilst other teeth are reduced to rudi- 
mental minuteness, or are wanting altogether: but the 
number of the teeth never exceeds, in any hoofed quadru- 
ped, that displayed in the dental formula of the Anoplo- 
therium. It is likewise most interesting to find that those 
species with a comparatively defective dentition, as the 
horned Ruminants for example, manifest transitorily, in 
the embryo-state, the germs of upper incisors and canines,* 
which disappear before birth, but which were retained and 
functionally developed in the cloven-footed Anoplothere. 
The dental system of this extinct quadruped realized, in 
short, that ideally perfect type upon which so many 
kinds and degrees of variation have been superinduced in 
the dentition of later and still existing species of hoofed 
Mammalia. 
The outer incisors of the Anoplotherium commune have 
their crowns produced into a low point, and the canine 
differs only by a slight increase of breadth and thickness 
of the crown; so that Cuvier, in his original and highly 
interesting memoir in the ‘Annales du Museum,’ was 
induced, in the absence of any evidence of the extent of 
the intermaxillary bone, to describe this tooth as an 
incisor, and the canines as being absent in the weaponless 
pachyderm.+ The true canine of the Anoplothere be- 
comes, therefore, from the great breadth and low point of 
* Goodsir, in the ‘ Report of the British Association,’ 1838. 
+ The name Anoplotherium (@ priv. ¢rav, weapon, ézgiov, beast), first proposed 
in this memoir, has reference to the absence of those natural weapons, as tusks, 
long and sharp canines, horns, or claws, with which other quadrupeds have been 
supplied. 
