176 MAMMALIAN DENTITION 



which is caniniform in the upper jaw. The curved nature of 

 the upper incisor crowns enables their tips to point downward; 

 the lower teeth slope obliquely upward; all have a well-marked 

 cingulum on the inner aspect and tend toward a trefoil design. 

 The canines are long but not so typically carnivorous as in the 

 Cat. The premolars are simple except the last upper tooth 

 and display the primitive increase in size from before back- 

 ward. The sectorial fourth upper premolar exhibits what 

 corresponds to the metacone-metastyle shear of the Insectivore 

 molar together with a low palatal cusp borne on a separate 

 root ; this tooth shears lateral to the sectorial first lower molar. 

 In the maxilla the third molar is non-existent and the second 

 reduced. The first is large and shows the three cusps of the tri- 

 gon with a Avell-developed palatal cingulum and a small hypo- 

 cone. The same features on a much smaller, scale distinguish 

 the second molar. The first mandibular molar has a pro- 

 nounced protoconid-paraconid shear with a diminutive cingu- 

 lar cusp taking the place of the metaconid:* the talonid is 

 low and presents two cusps the hypoconid and the entoconid; 

 its trigonid is thus developed for sectorial purposes. The sec- 

 ond molar is small with protoconid and metaconid both low 

 and a basin-shaped talonid: the third is greatly reduced and 

 simplified, even non-existent in many cases. 



Passing next to the equally primitive Civets Ave take as our 

 example the Indian Easse, Viverra malaccensis (Fig. 61) the 

 smallest of the true Civets, an animal which is still arboreal 

 in habit, rapacious, living upon such small animals as it can 

 catch but also probably upon insects as the sharp cusps of its 

 molars indicate. The jaws are elongated, the incisors set more 

 transversely than in the Dog, the condyle is low and the palate 

 extends only a short distance behind the molars. The dental 

 formula of the Rasse is: 



*In the Carnivora there is a tendency to lose the metaconid. This is especially 

 obvious in the sectorial first lower molar. 



