SUCCESSION OF THE ELEPHANT'S GRINDERS. 281 



Succession. — As the rate of increase, both of size and 

 in tbe number of tbe component plates of the grinding 

 tooth, is nearly identical in both jaws, it will suffice to 

 briefly describe the teeth and the periods at which they 

 successively appear in the lower jaw of the Asiatic ele- 

 phant. 



The first molar ^ which cuts the gum in the course of 

 the second week after birth, has a sub-compressed crown, 

 nine lines in antero-posterior diameter, divided by three 

 transverse clefts into four plates, the third being the 

 broadest, and the tooth here measuring six lines across ; 

 the base slightly contracts, and forms a neck as long as 

 the enamelled crown, but of less breadth, and this divides 

 into an anterior and posterior, long, sub-cylindrical, di- 

 verging, but mutually incurved fangs ; the total length 

 of this tooth is one inch and a half. The corresponding- 

 upper molar cuts the gum a little earlier than the lower 

 one: the neck of this tooth is shorter, and the two fangs 

 are shorter, larger, and more compressed than those of 

 the lower first molar. The first molar of the elephant is 

 the horaologue of the probably deciduous molar (Fig. 

 75), c?2, in other ungulates; it is not a mere miniature 

 of the great molars of the mature animal, but retains, 

 agreeably with the period of life at which it is developed, 

 a character much more nearly approaching that of the 

 ordinary pachyderm al molar, manifesting the adherence 

 to the more general type by the minor complexity of the 

 crown, and by the form and relative size of the fangs. 

 In the transverse divisions of the crown we perceive the 

 affinity to the tapiroid type, the diffisrent links connecting 

 which with the typical elephants are supplied by the ex- 

 tinct lophiodons, dinotheriums, and mastodons. The 



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