CLASSIFICATION OF MOLARS. 519 



The character of form (' trenchant') in reference to this tooth, 

 fails, as we have seen, in its first application : the character of 

 relative position to the base of the maxillary zygomatic process 

 has as little constancy or value ; and, indeed, I never found any 

 Comparative Anatomist, who, when asked to indicate the ' dent 

 principale' by that character in the Lion's skull, did not point 

 to the third premolar or ' carnassial' of Cuvier, instead of to the 

 second premolar or 'principale' of M. de Blainville. The name 



* principale' seems to refer to a character of size ; and in the Human 

 Subject, the tooth, so called by M. de Blainville, is larger than 

 the third molar, and not less than the second ; but before we 

 quit the Quadrumanous series we find numerous examples in which, 

 in the lower jaw especially, the last molar tooth is the principal 

 one in point of both size and complexity of crown; and the 



* principales' in the Feline dentition, according to M. de Blainville, 

 are far from being the chief either in size or special adaptation 

 to the carnivorous regimen. 



It may be thought, perhaps, that the principles of the classifi- 

 cation of the teeth, adopted by M. de Blainville, have been tested by 

 extreme examples in selecting the dentition of Man and the Lion ; 

 let us take, therefore, a third instance of the Author's application 

 of them from the Carnivorous order. In the Paradoxurus the upper 

 molar series has a different relative position to the root of the 

 zygomatic process from that in the Lion ; and accordingly we find 

 the upper carnassial tooth of Cuvier, or the last of my premolars, 

 selected by M. de Blainville as the * dent principale', leaving three 

 premolars in advance of it ; the tooth immediately anterior to the 

 lower carnassial of Cuvier being selected as the corresponding 

 'principale' in the lower jaw. Osteogr. de Viverra, p. 43. Here, 

 again, therefore, we find that teeth which are 'dents de remplacement' 

 in one Mammiferous animal, the Paradoxure, are selected as the ana- 

 logues of true molar teeth rising posteriorly to the whole deciduous 

 series in another, the Monkey, for example. The upper ' principale' 

 in the Civet and Paradoxure not only displaces a milk-molar, 

 but one which had a tubercular and more complex crown ; and 

 this is precisely what happens to the premolar which precedes the 



* principale' in the Human and Quadrumanous dentition, but which 



