File:The Horse - its treatment in health and disease, with a complete guide to breeding, training and management (1905) (14775322001).jpg

Identifier: horseitstreatmen09axej (find matches)
Title: The Horse : its treatment in health and disease, with a complete guide to breeding, training and management
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Axe, J. Wortley
Subjects: Horses
Publisher: London : Gresham

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e consideration of thebones of the limbs we willnext give particular attentionto the head, mainly on accountof the teeth. These, althoughin the popular view they arelooked upon merely as organsfor masticating food, and forthis purpose are divided intofront and back teeth or in-cisors and molars, do really possess very special features, by the aid ofwhich the naturalist is enabled to determine the family or order to whichanimals belong. The exploit of the palaeontologist in constructing the model of anextinct animal from a single fossil bone or tooth is often aceejjted as atrick of sleight-of-hand, more calculated to amuse than to instruct, butwhen all the facts are known there is really nothing very wonderfulin the procedure. Anyone, for example, who is familiar with the formof the teeth of the shark could hardly make a mistake in their identifi-cation, and if a fossilized tooth of a shark were placed in his hand hewould at once, in imagination, construct the animal to which the tooth
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Fig. 660.—Side View of Skull of Man, with the boneremoved so as to show the whole of the teeth z, Zygomatic arch ; ii, nasal bone; o, orbit; t, temporal fossa;oc, occipital condyle; e, external auditory opening; ff, clenoidfossa for articulation of the lower jaw; co, coronoid process oflower jaw; i^ and i, incisor teeth; c, canine; pvti and pm^,premolar teeth; m in m, the three molar teeth. SPECIAL FEATUEES IN STRUCTURE 493 belonged—in fact, it would be impossible for him to avoid doing so. Inlike manner other characteristic structures and organs are in themselvesindisputable evidence of their origin, and to the naturalist the realizationof the form of an animal upon such evidence is a mere involuntary andquite spontaneous mental process scarcely attended with any effort. To understand the value of the evidence afforded by the teeth andcertain bones of the skull of the horse as connecting the existing animalwith its remote ancestors, it will be necessary to consider some of themos

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