WE have next to consider the teeth, and with these the mouth, that is the cavity which they enclose and form. The teeth have one invariable office, namely the reduction of food; but besides this general function they have other special ones, and these differ in different groups. Thus in some animals the teeth serve as weapons; but this with a distinction. For there are offensive weapons and there are defensive weapons; and while in some animals, as the wild Carnivora, the teeth answer both purposes, in many others, both wild and domesticated, they serve only for defence. In man the teeth are admirably constructed for their general office, the front ones being sharp, so as to cut the food into bits, and the hinder ones broad and flat, so as to grind it to a pulp; while between these and separating them are the dog-teeth, which, in accordance with the rule that the mean partakes of both extremes, share in the characters of those on either side, being broad in one part but sharp in another. Similar distinctions of shape are presented by the teeth of other animals, with the exception of those whose teeth are one and all of the sharp kind. In man, however, the number and the character even of these sharp teeth have been mainly determined by the requirements of speech. For the front teeth of man contribute in many ways to the formation of letter-sounds.
In some animals, however, the teeth, as already said, serve merely for the reduction of food. When, besides this, they serve as offensive and defensive weapons, they may either be formed into tusks, as for instance is the case in swine, or may be sharp-pointed and interlock with those of the opposite jaw, in which case the animal is said to be saw-toothed. The explanation of this latter arrangement is as follows.
The strength of such an animal is in its teeth, and these depend for their efficiency on their sharpness. In order, then, to prevent their getting blunted by mutual friction, such of them as serve for weapons fit into each other's interspaces, and are so kept in proper condition. No animal that has sharp interfitting teeth is at the same time furnished with tusks. For nature never makes anything superfluous or in vain. She gives, therefore, tusks to such animals as strike in fighting, and serrated teeth to such as bite. Sows, for instance, have no tusks, and accordingly sows bite instead of striking.
A general principle must here be noted, which will be found applicable not only in this instance but in many others that will occur later on. Nature allots each weapon, offensive and defensive alike, to those animals alone that can use it; or, if not to them alone, to them in a more marked degree; and she allots it in its most perfect state to those that can use it best; and this whether it be a sting, or a spur, or horns, or tusks, or what it may of a like kind.
Thus as males are stronger and more choleric than females, it is in males that such parts as those just mentioned are found, either exclusively, as in some species, or more fully developed, as in others. For though females are of course provided with such parts as are no less necessary to them than to males, the parts, for instance, which subserve nutrition, they have even these in an inferior degree, and the parts which answer no such necessary purpose they do not possess at all. This explains why stags have horns, while does have none; why the horns of cows are different from those of bulls, and, similarly, the horns of ewes from those of rams. It explains also why the females are often without spurs in species where the males are provided with them, and accounts for similar facts relating to all other such parts.
