Morning journal and courier., 1891-04-14

through the side of ship. That lance is
simply the left upper incisor of the NAM
NAL. Once in while by a freak of both
of the upper incisors will be developed in
the narwhal so that it is equipped with
two spears instead of one. The tooth in
this case is designed for weapon in fight
ing. The female has no lance
Look at the sawfsh. The entire
growth of its saw, which is prolongation
of the nasal process. is fringed with teeth.
Again you have q weapon merely, the
manner of the creature being the strike
right and left for the purpose of wound
ing its prey. In mammals, however, the
teeth are restricted to the jawbones. Liz
ards and snakes have them on the bones of
the palate as we'll True bony teeth are
peculiar to animal which have bsckbones.
The most elaborate dental apparatus
known belongs to the sea urchin, whose
jaws are composed of forty pieces, moved
by forty separate muscles. Snsils have a
sort of ribbon with which they rasp their
food as with file. Anteaters, though
they are mammals, have no teeth at all;
but they get there Just the same, having
no need to chew their prey. The whale
bone whale is mammal that has no teeth,
its practice being to swallow its food
whole.
''The biggest of fresh water fishes. the
'arapaima' of the Amazon in South Amer
lea, which grows to six feet in length, has
teeth on its tangue, so that the latter re-
sembles the file and is used as such Some
kinds of trout also have the same pecu-
iarity. Fishes that swallow their prey en-
tire have their teeth SO supported on hexi-
BILE bases as to bend backward, but not
forward, in order that their victims shall
not escape after they have been seized
''In ages gone by there were ferocious
sharks, such as would make mouthful of
you without blinking, seventy feet in
length. Plenty of their teeth have been
found which are five inches long, whereas
the biggest of the teeth belonging to sharks
that exist at the present day are one and a
half inches long. Speaking of extinct
creatures reminds me to say that all of the
early birds-those of early geologic times,
that is-had teeth, with which they cap
tured the early worms of the same period.
Being descended from raptiles, it is natu-
raj that they should possess dental
equipment, but when they ceased to be
carnivorous they had no teeth any longer.
Certain animals have teeth which grow
during all their lives. The rat and the
squirrel are examples of this. Our own
teeth are developed from pulps, which are
absorbed and disappear after the teeth are
petual and is continually secreting materi-
al by which the incisor gains length.
Therefore the animal is obliged to gnaw
all the time to keep the tooth ground down
to the proper length. 1t is commonly i'm
agined that the rats keep gnawing from
pure cussedness, but such is not the case.
Sometimes it happens that the beasts
upper and lower incisors do not meet
properly, SO that it is unable to gnaw, and
its teeth keep growing around in spiral.
Cases have been known where a rats tooth
grew in this manner through its skull so
as to pierce the brain and kill the unfortu-
nate The biggest teeth 1 know of are
those of the mastodon, which we have in
the shape of FOSSILS One advantage about
teeth is that they are harder than almost
anything else in nature and will last
longer, SO that they may be picked up in
an excellent state of preservation ages at
ter the animals to which they originally
belonged are dead.
"You often hear of rendering rattle
snake harmless by pulling out its fangs.
Then, again, you read of cases where a
serpent so treated has bitten persons ia
tally. The reason for this is that a poi
sonous snake is deprived only temporarily
of its venomous powers by the extraction
of the two incisors in the upper jaw, at
the bases of which are the poison glands.
OF course you know that the fangs art
hollow, so that when the animal strikes
the venom gushes through them into the
flesh of the person struck. Now by draw
ing the two teeth the snake may be rem
dered harmless for few weeks, but after
short time the two teeth just behind the
original fangs move up and take their
places, making connections with the poi
son glands and thus becoming poison
fangs as good and effective as the old
onesn