OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 
413 
treats; it is one almost new in veterinary literature; some por¬ 
tions of the work are perfectly new ; it is most correctly and 
scientifically executed ; and the circumstances at which we have 
hinted, and of which the father speaks shortly but feelingly, 
give an increased value, a kind of charm to the whole. 
Those of our readers w'ho understand the French language 
will lose no time in making a most acceptable addition to their 
library. For the sake of the English reader, we will extract the 
account of the teeth of the dog and the hog, as indicating the 
ao'c of these animals. The writings of no English author con- 
tain satisfactory information on these points, not even excepting 
the very best of them, composed by Mr. Blaine. Of the deter¬ 
mination of the age of cattle and sheep by the inspection of the 
teeth, something has appeared in the “ Farmer’s Series;” to the 
author of which it is gratifying to observe how closely, without 
the possibility of intercommunication, or the knowledge of each 
other’s writings, the French and English wmrks coincide. They 
both drew from nature. 
The full-grown dog, says M. Girard, has forty-two teeth— 
twenty in the upper, and twenty-two in the lower jaw; the 
latter having tw^o small supplementary molars. All the teeth, 
with the exception of the tushes, are provided with a neck, 
covered by the gum, and separating the body of the tooth from 
the root. The teeth are pointed, and disposed so as to tear and 
crush the food on which, in a state of nature, the dog lives. They 
are of a moderate size, compared with those ol‘ other animals, 
and are subject to little loss of substance compared with the 
teeth of the monodactyle. In all of them, however, there is 
some alteration of form and substance, both in the incisors and 
the tushes; but this depends so much on the kind of food on 
which the animal lives, and the consequent use of the teeth, 
that the indication of the age by the altered appearance of the 
mouth is not to be depended upon after the animal is about four 
years old. 
The incisor teeth are six in number in each jaw ; they are 
placed opposite to each other. In the lower jaw, the pincers 
or central teeth are always the largest and the strongest, the 
middle teeth somewhat less, and the corner teeth the smallest 
and the w'eakest. In the upper jaw, however, the corner teeth are 
much larger than the middle ones ; they are farther apart from 
their neighbours, and they terminate in a conical point, some¬ 
what curved inw’ards and backwards. By degrees, they assume 
llkew'isc an angular form, for they press and rub against the 
inferior tushes. 
