PEEFACE TO FIRST EDITION 



My apology for the presentation of this little book as 

 a candidate for the favor of my colleagues, the teachers 

 in the Dental Colleges of the United States, is, that there 

 is a real and pressing need for a concise compendium 

 of Comparative Dental Anatomy for the use of dental 

 students. The general works on this subject are not 

 adapted to the special needs of the student of dentistry, 

 and it is the mission of this manual to select and ar- 

 range for him just the material he will require for the 

 illumination of his studies of the human teeth by com- 

 parison with the teeth of lower animals and the philoso- 

 phy of tooth forms, without going into the elaborate and 

 cumbrous details of the subject. These details can be 

 found in the larger works if he should desire to pursue 

 the subject further. 



The sifting out of the special matter here presented 

 from the mass of material bearing on the subject in the 

 literature of zoology has been the work of years, and rep- 

 resents the gleanings from many fields. Its matter and 

 methods have been slowly evolved through the needs of 

 the work of teaching this branch in the class-room, and it 

 is with the hope that it will be useful to the teachers of 

 this branch that this little manual is offered to them. 



Many branches of science are laid under contribution 

 to supply material for our special needs as dentists, and 

 it is the province of dental text-books and teachers to se- 

 lect from the general store of accumulated facts just 

 those which will be of service to the dental specialist; 

 so Comparative Dental Anatomy is drawn upon for the 



