The penultimate tooth in the upper jaw and the last tooth in the lower jaw were denominated by Cuvier " dents carnassieres." The carnassial or sectorial is a very charac teristic tooth in the carnivo rous order, but undergoes many modifications, and preserves its typical form, as repre- Working surface of the upper sectorial sented in figures 130 and 131, tooth, Hymns. Nat. size.
only in the most strictly flesh-feeding species. In it may be distinguished the part called the " blade " (fig. 130, b, b), and the part called the " tubercule" (fig. 130, t). The lower sec torial in the genus Felis consists exclu sively of the blade (fig. 131), which is pretty equally divided into two lobes. The blade of the upper sectorial always plays upon the outside, and a little in advance of the lower sectorial.
The upper sectorial succeeds and displaces a deciduous tubercular molar in all Carnivore, and is, therefore, essen tially a premolar tooth ; the lower sec torial comes up behind the deciduous series and has no immediate predeces- Side view of lower sectorial sor ; it is, therefore, a true molar, and tooth, Lion. Nat. size. the first of that class. The sectorial teeth present gradational varieties of form in the carnivorous series, from Machairodu.s, in which the crown consists exclusively of the "blade" in both jaws, to Ursus (fig. 132, m z ), in which it is totally tubercular ; the development of the tubercle bearing an inverse relation to the carnivorous propensities of the species.
The finest examples of the large pleistocene lion (Fells spekea) have been discovered in bone-caves—e.g., in those of
Banwell, Somersetshire, and of Belgium. The production of the apex of the nasal process of the maxillary, as far back as that of the nasal bone, proves this species to have been a lion, not a tiger. It roamed over pliocene and pleistocene Europe, and has left its remains in many stratified deposits of the former period in Britain.
Under similar circumstances have been found, more abundantly in Germany, the remains of the gigantic bear (Ursus spekeus), and more abundantly in England those of the great hyaena (Hycena spekea), probably a spotted one, like the fierce " Crocuta" of the Cape. Wolves, foxes, badgers, otters, wolverines, and martin-cats, foumaits and weasels, have left their remains in the newer tertiary deposits and bone caves. Bats, moles, and shrews, were then, as now, the forms that preyed upon the insect world in Europe. The majority of these Carnivore, like the hares, rabbits, voles, and other Rodents, are not distinguishable from the species which still exist. These smaller unguiculate Mammals, like the smaller pleistocene Ruminants, seem to have survived those changes during which the larger species perished. It is pro-. bable that the horse and ass are descendants of species of pleistocene antiquity. At the pliocene period there existed a species similar in size to a zebra. There is no certain character by which the present wild boar can be distinguished specifically from the Sus, which was contemporary with the mammoth.