COMMON ANOPLOTHERE. 433 



series with the premolars and true molars, which character 

 is now manifested only in the human species. 



Amongst the varied forms of existing Herbivora we find 

 certain teeth disproportionately developed, sometimes to a 

 monstrous size ; whilst other teeth are reduced to rudi- 

 mental minuteness, or are wanting altogether : but the 

 number of the teeth never exceeds, in any hoofed quadru- 

 ped, that displayed in the dental formula of the Anoplo- 

 therium. It is likewise most interesting to find that those 

 species with a comparatively defective dentition, as the 

 horned Ruminants for example, manifest transitorily, in 

 the embryo-state, the germs of upper incisors and canines,* 

 which disappear before birth, but which were retained and 

 functionally developed in the cloven-footed Anoplothere. 

 The dental system of this extinct quadruped realized, in 

 short, that ideally perfect type upon which so many 

 kinds and degrees of variation have been superinduced in 

 the dentition of later and still existing species of hoofed 

 Mammalia. 



The outer incisors of the Anoplotheriwm commune have 

 their crowns produced into a low point, and the canine 

 differs only by a slight increase of breadth and thickness 

 of the crown ; so that Cuvier, in his original and highly 

 interesting memoir in the ' Annales du Museum/ was 

 induced, in the absence of any evidence of the extent of 

 the intermaxillary bone, to describe this tooth as an 

 incisor, and the canines as being absent in the weaponless 

 pachyderm. { The true canine of the Anoplothere be- 

 comes, therefore, from the great breadth and low point of 



* Goodsir, in the ' Report of the British Association,' 1838. 



+ The name Anoplotherium (a, priv. JVXoy, weapon, fa^i/iv, beast), first proposed 

 in this memoir, has reference to the absence of those natural weapons, as tusks, 

 long and sharp canines, horns, or claws, with which other quadrupeds have been 

 supplied. 



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