i873«] The Kent's Hole Machairodus. 209 



the hollow of the tooth disclosed, which, with its unworn 

 point, shows it to have belonged to a young individual. 

 The other teeth represented in the same plate are truncated 

 at their apex, and despoiled of their posterior serrature, 

 while the anterior indenture is entire. . . . The appearance 

 of the blunted apex of the teeth bespeaks the effect of 

 violence. The part is not worn down and polished as is the 

 case with teeth employed in bruising vegetables, but broken 

 sharply off as if from the act of piercing its foe. . . . The 

 enamel is longitudinally situated, and the base of the fang is 

 distinguished by dotted lines in strong relief? 



" Judging from the wear of the apex and the solidity of the 

 fangs, three of the specimens belonged to adult individuals. 

 They are all gnawed at their base, and the young one 

 cracked across."* 



In a subsequent passage he adds : — " In addition to the 

 canines, I have lately discovered in the same bed a small 

 tooth about an inch long. The internal face of the enamel 

 is fringed with a serrated border. This tooth is dis- 

 tinguished further by two tubercles or protuberances at the 

 base of the enamel, from which the serration springs, and 

 describes a pointed arch on the internal surface, vide figs. 

 8, g.t The body of the tooth in this specimen is not com- 

 pressed but rounded. Whether this belongs to an inferior 

 species of U. ciiltridens, or is simply the incisor anterior to 

 the canine of U. cultridens, I am not able to pronounce with 

 certainty. "J 



This latter tooth was subsequently identified, figured, and 

 described by Professor Owen as the right external upper 

 incisor of his Machairodus latidens.\\ MacEnery's statement 

 respecting its size must have been based on a rough guess, 

 not on actual measurement, for, instead of being " about an 

 inch long," it measured, according to Professor Owen's 

 figure, 1*97 inches in length, in a straight line, from the 

 vertex of the crown to the base of the fang. 



What has become of the incisor appears to be entirely 

 unknown; but the five canines have all been traced. One 

 of them, as we have seen, was presented to the Museum of 

 the Geological Society of London ; and Sir W. C. Trevelyan 

 has recently presented his specimen to the Museum of the 



* Ibid., pp. 369, 370. 



t These figures are not known. From the fact that he does not specify the 

 plate in which they occur, it seems probable that they were to be added to 

 plate F, the last he had previously specified, and that in which the canines of 

 Machairodus were represented. 



t Ibid., p. 370. 



|| Hist. Brit. Fossil Mammals, &c, 1846, pp. 177, 182. 

 VOL. III. (N.S.) 2 E 



