106 FOSSIL HORSES' TEETH. 



do not extract them. Prof. Youatt doubtless meant 

 to say they should be extracted. 



As Remnant teeth are found functionally devel- 

 oped in the jaws of fossil horses in which they were 

 the largest of all the teeth a few extracts from the 

 works of well-known men concerning fossil horses and 

 their teeth will be appropriate as a conclusion to this 

 chapter. Prof. Richard Owen says (" Odontography," 

 vol. i, p. 575): 



" Cuvier was unable, from the materials at his com- 

 mand, to detect any characters in the bones or teeth 

 of the different existing species of Equus, or in the 

 fossil remains of the same genus, by which he could 

 distinguish them, save by their difference of size. 

 Among the numerous teeth of a species of Equus as 

 large as a horse fourteen and a half hands high, col- 

 lected from the Oreston cavernous fissures, I have 

 found specimens clearly indicating two distinct spe- 

 cies, so far as specific differences may be founded on 

 well-marked modifications of the teeth. 



" One of these, like the ordinary Equus fossilis of 

 the drift and pleistocene formations, differs from the 

 existing Equus caballus by the minor transverse diam- 

 eter of the molar teeth ; the other, in the more com- 

 plex and elegant plication of the enamel,* and in the 



* In Prof. Owen's " History of British Fossil Mammals and 

 Birds " (pp. 393-4), the " elegant plication of the enamel " on 

 the crown of this tooth is illustrated. Prof. Owen says : " Fig. 

 153 illustrates the character, above adverted to, of the complex 

 plication of the enamel, as it appears on the grinding surface of 

 a partially worn upper molar tooth, the second of the right side. 

 The length of this tooth is three inches four lines, and the roots 

 had not begun to be formed. One cannot view the elegant fold- 

 ings of tlie enamel in the pressnt fossil teeth, and in those of 



