105 MAMMALIA OF INDIA. 
hold words,’ bearing as they do an important part in fable, in travel, 
and even in history ; so many of them are of such wonderful beauty, so 
many of such terrible ferocity, that no one can fail to be interested in 
them, even apart from the fact likely to influence us more in their favour 
than any other, that the two home pets, which of all others are the 
commonest and the most interesting, belong to the group. No one 
who has had a dog friend, no one who has watched the wonderful 
instance of maternal love afforded by a cat with her kittens, no one 
who loves riding across country after a fox, no lady with a taste for 
handsome furs, no boy who has read of lion and tiger hunts and has 
longed to emulate the doughty deeds of the hunter, can fail to be 
interested in an assemblage which furnishes animals at once so useful, 
so beautiful and so destructive. It must not be supposed from the 
name of this group that all its members are exclusively flesh-eaters, and 
indeed it will be hardly necessary to warn the reader against falling into 
this mistake, as there are few people who have never given a dog a 
biscuit, or a beara bun. Still both the dog and several kinds of bears 
prefer flesh-meat when they can get it, but there are some bears which 
live almost exclusively on fruit, and are, therefore, in strictness not 
carnivorous at all. The name must, however, be taken as a sort of 
general title for a certain set of animals which have certain characteristics 
in common, and which differ from all other animals in particular ways.” 
I would I had more space at my disposal for further quotations from 
Professor Parker’s ‘General Remarks on the Land Carnivora,’ his 
style is so graphic. 
The dentition of the Carnivora varies according to the exclusiveness 
of their fleshy diet, and the nature of that diet. 
In taking two typical forms I give below sketches from skulls in my 
possession of the tiger, and the common Indian black bear; the one 
has trenchant cutting teeth which work up and down, the edges sliding 
past each other just like a pair of scissors; the other has flat crowned 
molars adapted for triturating the roots and herbage on which it feeds. 
A skull of an old bear which I have has molars of which the crowns are 
worn almost smooth from attrition. In the most carnivorous forms the 
tubercular molars are almost rudimentary. 
The skull exhibits peculiar features for the attachment of the necessary 
powerful muscles. The bones of the face are short in comparison with 
the cranial portion of the skull (the reverse of the Herdivores) ; the 
strongly built zygomatic arch, the roughened ridges and the broad 
ascending ramus of the lower jaw, all afford place for the attachment of 
the immense muscular development. Then the hinge of the jaw is 
peculiar ; it allows of no lateral motion, as in the ruminants ; the condy/e, 
or hinge-bolt of a tiger’s jaw (taken from the largest in my collection), 
measures two inches, and as this fits accurately into its corresponding 
