Aristotle THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

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128 pages - You are on Page 42

No animal of these genera is provided with double rows of teeth. There is, however, an animal of the sort, if we are to believe Ctesias. He assures us that the Indian wild beast called the 'martichoras' has a triple row of teeth in both upper and lower jaw; that it is as big as a lion and equally hairy, and that its feet resemble those of the lion; that it resembles man in its face and ears; that its eyes are blue, and its colour vermilion; that its tail is like that of the land-scorpion; that it has a sting in the tail, and has the faculty of shooting off arrow-wise the spines that are attached to the tail; that the sound of its voice is a something between the sound of a pan-pipe and that of a trumpet; that it can run as swiftly as deer, and that it is savage and a man-eater.

Man sheds his teeth, and so do other animals, as the horse, the mule, and the ass. And man sheds his front teeth; but there is no instance of an animal that sheds its molars. The pig sheds none of its teeth at all.

Part 2

With regard to dogs some doubts are entertained, as some contend that they shed no teeth whatever, and others that they shed the canines, but those alone; the fact being, that they do shed their teeth like man, but that the circumstance escapes observation, owing to the fact that they never shed them until equivalent teeth have grown within the gums to take the place of the shed ones. We shall be justified in supposing that the case is similar with wild beasts in general; for they are said to shed their canines only. Dogs can be distinguished from one another, the young from the old, by their teeth; for the teeth in young dogs are white and sharp-pointed; in old dogs, black and blunt.

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