AS KNOWLEDGE, DISCIPLINE, AND POWER 309 



being to support their bodies, they have no need of so strongly 

 formed a shoulder ; whence follows the absence of clavicles (2) and 

 acromion, and the narrowness of the scapula. Xo longer having any 

 need to turn their fore-arm, the radius \\'ill be united with the ulna, 

 or least articulated by a ginglymus and not arthrodially with the 

 humerus (3). Their herbivorous diet will require teeth, with fiat 

 crowns, to bruise up the grain and herbage ; these crowns must needs 

 be unequal, and to this end enamel must alternate with bony matter 

 (4) ; such a kind of crown requiring horizontal movements for tritura- 

 tion, the condyle of the jaw must not form so close a hinge as in the 

 carnivora ; it must be flattened ; and this entails a correspondingly 

 flattened temporal facet. The temporal fossa which will have to 

 receive only a small temporal muscle will be shallow and narrow (s)-" 

 The various propositions are here marked with numbers, to avoid 

 repetition ; and it is easy to show that not one is really based on a 

 necessary physiological law : — 



(i.) Why should not ungulate animals be carrion feeders? 

 or even, if living animals were their prey, surely a horse could 

 run down and destroy other animals with at least as much ease 

 as a wolf 



(2, 3.) But what purpose, save support, is subserved by the 

 forelegs of the dog and wolf? how large are their clavicles ? how 

 much power have they of rotating the fore-arm ? 



(4, 5.) The sloth is purely herbivorous, but its teeth present 

 no trace of any such alternation of substance. 

 Again, what difference exists in structure of tooth, in the shape of the 

 condyle of the jaw, and in that of the temporal fossa, between the 

 herbivorous and carnivorous bears? If bears were only known to 

 exist in the fossil state, would any anatomist venture to conclude 

 from the skull and teeth alone, that the white bear is naturally 

 carnivorous, while the brown bear is naturally frugivorous ? 

 Assuredly not ; and thus, in the case of Cuvier's own selection, we 

 see that his arguments are absolutely devoid of conclusive force. 

 Let us select another then : on the table is a piece of carboniferous 

 shale, bearing the impression of an animal long since extinct. It is a 

 mere impression of the external form, but this is amply sufficient to 

 enable us to be morally certain that if we had a living specimen, we 

 should find its jaws, if it had any, moving sideways — that its hard 

 skeleton formed a sheath outside its muscles — that its nervous system 

 was turned downwards when it walked — that the heart was placed on 

 the opposite side of the body — that if it possessed special respiratory 

 organs, they were gills, &c., &c. 



