• Mt'}?ioir upon living JxndfossU Elephant!;. 2C 1 



parts to the bottom of the capsule ; for williout it the conti- 

 nuity would be broken.. 



The substance called osseous and the enamel are tb.erefore 

 produced by a kind of juxtaposition ; trie former is formed • 

 in layers from the outside to the inside ; the interior layer 

 is the last formed, and il is also the most extended, being 

 absolutely tlie same as in shells 3 and its formation com- 

 ijicncing by the most saljent poir.ts of the gelatinous nu- 

 cleus of tlje tooth, it is at these points that this substance is 

 thickest ; it goes on becoming thinner in proportion as it re- 

 moves from them. 



If we recur in our imagination to the epoch when this 

 transudation takes place, we may conceive that there is 

 formed a small cap upon each of the notches which divide 

 the edges of the small gelatinous walls already mentioned. 

 In proportion as new layers are added to the former, the 

 caps change into conical horns ; if tlie new and inteiior lay- 

 ers descend to the bottoip of the scars of the edges of ihest' 

 small walls, all the little horns unite into one single trans- 

 versal lamina 5 lastly, if they descend to the bottom of the 

 small walls themselves, all the transversal lamince wii! unite 

 into one single corona of a tooth, which would present the 

 same eminences and the same sections which wp see in its 

 gelatinous nucleus, if during the time these layers were 

 transuding, other substances were not deposited above, and 

 had not partly filled the intervals, 



At first the enamel is deposited, as I have said, upon the 

 surface of the substance called osseous, by the internal mem- 

 brane of the capsule, under the ibriu of small fibres, or ra- 

 ther of small ciysiald, all of them perpendicular to this sur- 

 face, and forming on it in the first stages of dentition a kind 

 of velvet, with fine hairs. When we open th.e capsule of the 

 germ of a tooth, we find small molecules of th.e future ena- 

 mel as yet very slightly adhering to the internal face of this 

 ca|)sule, and detaching themselves from il very easily. A 

 part of these molecules also swims in a liquor interposed be- 

 tween the capsule and the germ. I never saw the small ve- 

 sicles adhering to the capsule from which Herissaul asserts 

 the matter pioeeeds, that afterwards, upon drying, becomes 

 U 3 the 



