226 THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD 



that we should not have hesitated to ascribe them 

 to a Carnivore of this genus, had these crenellated 

 canines not been found in situ in the skull of a 

 Brachyodus. 



Convergences no less curious are also observed in 

 the structure of the molars. All palaeontologists 

 know the astonishing resemblance of the molars of 

 the Tapirs, both living and fossil, to those of the 

 great Miocene Proboscidian, the Dinotherium. This 

 resemblance is so great that it managed to deceive 

 G. Cuvier, and led this illustrious anatomist to 

 consider some isolated Dinotherium teeth to have 

 belonged to a gigantic Tapir. This type of molar, 

 in which the denticles are welded into two trans- 

 verse ridges perpendicular to the crown (type 

 called Tapiroid or Lophiodont ), is found with 

 a few slight modifications in the Imparidigits of 

 the family of Lophiodontidse, parallel with that of 

 the Tapirs ; among the Amblypods in the Cory- 

 phodon and the Pyrotherium of Patagonia ; and 

 among the Rodents of the Hare family, etc. In 

 the same way, the type of molar termed bunodont, 

 in which the crown bristles with conical mounds 

 generally arranged in transverse pairs, is a primitive 

 type met with in a great number of families of mam- 

 mals, such as the Mastodon among the Proboscidians, 

 the Suidse among the Ungulates, and the family of 

 Rats or Muridse among the Rodents. Nothing is 

 more curious than to place the tiny first molar of 

 a rat side by side with the enormous molar of 

 an omnivorous Mastodon, such as the Mastodon 

 angustidens. It would be almost possible to ascribe 

 these two teeth to one and the same genus, were 



