340 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



rush upon it, and, vainly endeavouring to pierce its thick 

 skin with their mandibles, remain sticking in the glutinous 

 liquid with which it is lubricated from two very large glands 

 situated below its root. When sufficiently charged with prey, 

 the ant-eater suddenly withdraws his tongue, and swallows the 

 poor victims of an impotent fury. 



The duck-billed platypus has likewise a singular tooth- 

 less mouth, which very much resembles the flat and sensitive 

 bill of a lamellirostral bird ; but this strange anomaly of form 

 and structure entirely harmonises with the animal's food, as it 

 subsists on aquatic insects, larvae, molluscs, and other small 

 invertebrates, which conceal themselves in the mud and banks of 

 rivers, where its flattened beak well knows how to find them. 



The want of teeth, or the possession of mere dental rudiments, 

 is, however, confined but to a small number of the mammalia, 

 for these organs are as necessary to the carnivora in tearing 

 their prey as to the herbivorous quadrupeds in chewing, grinding, 

 or gnawing their vegetable food ; and so perfectly are they 

 in every case adapted to the peculiar wants of their possessor, 

 that a naturalist need only view the teeth of a quadruped to 

 know at once upon what it feeds. 



Thus in all the carnivora we find the incisor teeth only mo- 

 derately developed, while the 

 canine teeth are large, strong, 

 and pointed, well-formed for firmly 

 seizing and planting themselves 

 deeply into the flesh of their 

 victims. The molar teeth situated 



Dentition of Bear. behind these formidable instru- 



^ ments of destruction are of three 



naasial. e tuberculate or true molars. kindfl . ^^ wMch immediately 



follow the canines (false molars) being more or less pointed ; the 

 next, or the carnassial tooth, being specially adapted for divid- 

 ing and lacerating animal muscle by the sharp edge of its 

 summit, while the last or hindmost are more or less rounded or 

 tuberculated. 



The proportions which these different classes of molar teeth 

 bear to each other in degree and development, accord with the 

 relative carnivorous propensity of the different families. Thus 

 in the cats the canine teeth are preeminently strong, long, and 



