CLASSIFICATION OF MOLARS. 



517 



a milk tooth, and which is, therefore, a premolar according to my 

 definition, in the Lion, is made the analogue of a tooth which 

 rises above the gum without displacing any predecessor, and which 

 is consequently a true molar, in Man. It will, I presume, be 

 conceded that the teeth in the Lion, called ' principales' by M. de 

 Blainville, in having smaller and more simple crowns than those 

 behind them, and in being preceded by deciduous teeth which they 

 replace, are more naturally analogous to the bicuspides or premolars 

 in the Human Subject ; and if so, it may be concluded that the 

 characters which have conducted M. de Blainville to the opposite 

 conclusion cannot be founded in nature. 



These characters, moreover, seem in the instance cited, to 

 have been as little applicable to the detection of the tooth in the 

 lower jaw which is analogous to the 'principale* above, as to the 

 discovery of the ' principales' in different Mammalia ; and, indeed, 

 M. de Blainville abandons one of his own criteria, viz : that founded 

 on relative position, in selecting the second tooth of the Feline 

 molar series below, as the analogue of the second tooth in the upper 

 series, distinguished by him as the 'principale' in the preliminary 

 observations on the Classification of the Carnassiers (p. 69). The 

 same view of the analogies of the upper molar series is adopted 

 in the detailed descriptions given in the subsequent Monograph on 

 the genus Felis, but a different one is given of the lower molars : the 

 first tooth ip 3, fig. 1, PI. 127) is here described as the ' principale,* 

 and the two succeeding teeth are both ' arriere-molaires'. (p. 55). 



The relative value of the characters for the classification of the 

 molar teeth proposed in the present work, and of those proposed by 

 the Cuviers and by M. de Blainville, will be best tested by applying 

 them to the same instances as have been cited above. According 

 to my view the molar formula in Man is : — p. fEf, m. ^^ ; in the 

 Lion it is : — p. |e|, m. J^ : that is to say, the last tooth in the 

 series of both jaws of the Lion is the analogue of the first true 

 molar in Man, whilst the others answer to the bicuspids, of 

 which the Lion has one more in the upper jaw than Man possesses. 

 Thus the permanent teeth, indicated as the corresponding true 

 molars {m 1) in Felis and Homo, by their mode of succession, — neither 



