66o 
A Brace of Paradoxes. 
[November, 
chemico-physiological investigations, but upon experience 
and observation. Theories concerning the action of the 
saliva, and anent comminution as exposing a larger surface 
to the adtion of the digestive fluids, were added subsequently 
in explanation. Further, if food is to be bolted, not chewed, 
what is the particular necessity for teeth and for saliva 
at all ? 
It must also be considered that whether we owe our teeth 
to an aft of special creation or to the development worked 
out under the influence of natural selection, the case will be 
the same. Yet, in face of these considerations, deliberate 
feeding and thorough mastication are now condemned as 
not only needless, but positively hurtful, interfering with 
the work done in the stomach instead of promoting it. Dr. 
W. Browning, in order to decide the question, made a series 
of experiment upon dogs, and says : — “ If the meat, before 
being fed to the dog, was reduced to hash or cut into fine 
pieces, the digestion was at best but imperfeft, a consider- 
able portion of the undigested or imperfectly digested meat 
being found in the excreta. If, under the same conditions, 
meat was fed to the dog in large pieces, it was bolted at a 
gulp, with the result that little, if any, passed through un- 
digested : compared with the result from the chopped meat, 
it could be called a perfect digestion for the coarse form as 
compared with a decidedly imperfeft digestion for the fine 
form. So far as simple experiment goes, this must be pretty 
conclusive for the dog.” 
From these faCts he reasons, in our opinion illogically, 
that the same ought to be true of human digestion. Illo- 
gically, we say, because the circumstances of the cases differ 
in every important particular. Meat, the main diet of the 
dog, as of all Carnivora, is admittedly easier of digestion 
than other articles of food. Hence we see that the teeth of 
the Carnivora are adapted not for mincing and grinding, but 
simply for cutting and tearing flesh into morsels not too 
large to be swallowed. The more exclusively and truly car- 
nivorous any animal, the more its teeth display this type, 
whilst in proportion as any species inclines to a mixed diet 
the more its teeth are fitted for grinding. If we, then, 
mince the food of a carnivorous animal we place it under 
abnormal circumstances, and must not wonder if its func- 
tions are disturbed. With man the case is very different ; 
his food is more or less composed of vegetable matter ; his 
teeth are adapted for grinding to a pulp, and his intestines 
are relatively larger than those of the dog. If we may 
logically argue from the dog to the man, why not also to the 
