286 DEVELOPMENT OF ELEPHAXT'S GRINDERS. 



of the capsule. Althoiigli the enamel-pulp be in close 

 contact with the dentinal pulp prior to the commence- 

 ment of the formation of the tooth, one may readily con- 

 ceive a vacuity between them, which is continued uuinter- 

 ruptedlv, in many foldings, between all the gelatinous 

 plates of the dentinal pulp, and the partitions formed by 

 the combined enamel-pulp and the folds of the capsule. 

 According to the excretion view, this delicate apparatus 

 must have been immediately subjected to the violence of 

 being compressed in the unyielding bony box, by the de- 

 position of the dense matters of the tooth in the hypo- 

 thetical vacuity between the enamel and dentinal pulps ; 

 a process of absorption must have been conceived to be 

 set on foot immediately that the altered condition of the 

 gelatinous secreting organs took place ; and, according to 

 Cuvier's hypothesis, the secreting function must be sup- 

 posed to have proceeded, without any irregularity or in- 

 terruption, while the process of absorption was superin- 

 duced in the same part to relieve it from the effects of 

 pressure produced by its own secretion. 



The formation of the dentine commences immediately 

 beneath the memhrana 'proj^ria of the pulp ; a part which 

 Cuvier distinctly recognized, and which he accurately 

 traced as preserving its relative situation between the 

 dentine and enamel throughout the whole formation of 

 the dentine, and discernible in the completed tooth " as a 

 very fine grayish line, which separates the enamel from 

 the internal substance," or dentine. 



The calcification and conversion of the cells of the 

 dentinal pulp commence as usual at the peripheral parts 

 of the lamelliform processes furthest from the attached 

 base. It may readily be conceived, therefore, that, at the 



