296 SECOND APPENDIX. 



neck, the stupor of the eyes, the baldness of the eyelids and the 

 lassitude of the whole body." Book IV, Cap. V. 



So it is clear that the discoveries of Ruini aud Tenon in the 

 sixteenth century and that of Pessina in the nineteenth, while they 

 may have been entirely honest, were not first discoveries. (See 

 pages 69, 215.) The fame of Aristotle caused his mistake to- be- 

 come so deeply rooted that the comparatively obscure but intelli- 

 gent subsequent authors could not, or at least did not, correct it. 

 Men hear of obscure authors, but they rarely read them. 



Pliny (B. C. 23), compiled from many authors, and correctly de- 

 scribed the eruption and shedding of the incisors ; but while he 

 repeated Aristotle's mistake about the non-shedding of the molars, 

 lie failed to give the latter's description of the marks (such as it 

 is), arid also that of both Yarro and Columella. The compiling 

 from the latter's works must have been mostly done after Pliny's 

 death, as he was Columella's senior by about sixty-five years. 



Here is a good point from Pliny about the human teeth: "It 

 is the office of the front teeth to regulate the voice and the 

 speech. By a certain arrangement they receive, as if in concert, 

 the stroke communicated by the tongue, while by their structure 

 in such regular order, and their size, they cut short, modulate, or 

 soften the utterance of the words. When they are lost the artic- 

 ulation becomes altogether confused and indistinct." 



Some of the following statements, compiled by Pliny, are erro- 

 neous and some are extraordinary, to say the least (Vols. II and 

 III) : " There is no animal that changes the maxillary teeth which 

 stand beyond the canine teeth. While in all other animals the 

 teeth grow of a tawny color with old age, with the horse, and 

 him only, they become whiter the older he grows. If a horse is 

 gelded before it changes its teeth, it never sheds them. A female 

 ass which has not conceived before shedding what are called the 

 milk teeth, is considered to be barren. It is said that Caesar, the 

 Dictator, had a horse which would allow no one to mount but 

 himself, and that his forefeet were like those of a man. Indeed 

 it is thus represented in the statue before the Temple of Venus 

 Genetrix. Some persons are born with a continuous bone in the 

 mouth in place of teeth. This was the case of the upper jaw of 

 a son of Prusias, the King of Bithynia. The teeth are the only 

 parts of the body that resist the action of fire. Still, though they 

 are able to resist the action of flame, they become corroded by a 

 morbid state of the saliva. The canine teeth, when lost by an 



