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The incisors are at the points, they gallop up and down, and are worthless for doing hard work; the molars are at the hinges, and move slowly; and if anything tough has to be dealt with, it comes to them as a matter of course; hence they are the nutcrackers.
As you may suppose, the walrus cannot insert prey of any great size into this contracted passage; but that is no matter, as he lives partly on seaweeds, and partly indeed principally on shell-fish; his molars being specially adapted for breaking shells. They are short massive cylinders the upper ones fitting into the lower as a pestle into a mortar. It comes still nearer a fish than the others.
The permanent teeth succeed a shorter series of so-called "milk teeth," and they are diverse in structure, being incisors, canines, or "eye teeth," premolars, and molars; the particular numbers of each kind are almost invariable throughout the order and markedly different from those of other orders. The number of digits is always five, and with few exceptions they bear nails instead of claws.
And here, to prepare the way for certain things hereafter to be narrated, something farther needs be said concerning the light in which men's molars are regarded in Mardi. Strung together, they are sported for necklaces, or hung in drops from the ear; they are wrought into dice; in lieu of silken locks, are exchanged for love tokens.
The cigar end bears the marks of those two jagged molars, with the hiatus, which, as I have indicated, is due to the destruction of the eye-tooth between them. It is not likely that there was another man in the pirate's crew with teeth exactly like the commander's, therefore I say there can be no doubt that the cigar end was that of the Captain himself."
Here again the result of my observation, in so far as it has extended over the European area, is, that the specific characters of the molars are constant in each, within a moderate range of variation, and that we nowhere meet with intermediate forms." . . . Dr.
For five-and-thirty minutes not a sound was heard throughout the length and breadth of that boat, save the clank of cutlery and crockery, and the steady grinding of four sets of molars. At the end of five-and-thirty minutes, Harris said, "Ah!" and took his left leg out from under him and put his right one there instead.
I am afraid he can hardly help betraying his favoritism, as people who have any one showy point are apt to do, especially dentists with handsome teeth, who always smile back to their last molars. Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and next but one to the calm lady who has her in charge, he cannot help seeing their relations to each other.
The allusion is to a passage in the philosopher's "Pensees." Pascal describes man as a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but "a thinking reed." These two aptitudes, simple though they be, characterize man better than the number of his vertebrae and his molars.
The molars, also gradually lengthened, and became more and more complex on their grinding surface; the neck became longer; the brain steadily increased in size and its convolutions became more abundant. The evolution of the horse has made for greater fleetness and intelligence. In the rhinoceros, evolution seems to have taken the opposite course from that of the horse.
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