The Zoology of North American Big Game 



complex associations of a number of lesser and 

 more obscure ones, a recapitulation of which would 

 be tedious beyond the endurance of all but practiced 

 anatomists. For the present purposes It must be 

 enough to say that bears and dogs have forty-two 

 teeth in the complete set, of which four on each 

 side above and below are premolars, and two 

 above, with three below, are molars, but these 

 teeth in bears have flatter crowns and more 

 rounded tubercles than those of dogs, and the sec- 

 torial teeth are much less blade-like, this style of 

 tooth being better adapted to their omnivorous 

 food habits. Bears, furthermore, have five digits 

 on each foot and are plantigrade, while dogs have 

 but four toes behind and are digitigrade. These 

 differences are less marked in some of the smaller 

 arctolds, which may have as few as thirty-two 

 teeth, and come very near to dogs In the extent of 

 the digital surface which rests upon the ground In 

 walking. 



In distinction from these, /Eluroidea never 

 have more than two true molars below, and the 

 cusps of their teeth are much more sharply edged, 

 reaching In the sectorials the extreme of scissor-like 

 specialization. In all of them the claws are more 

 or less retractile, and they walk on the ends of their 

 fingers and toes. 



91 



