hunter at the cry of "Yoiks! Tally-ho!" "Philosophers!" said he,
"philosophers indeed! O ignoramuses, who do not even know the
structure of the human tooth! Look you, little boy, if nothing were
left on this earth of the present race of man, as we are assured upon
great authority will be the case one of these days,--and a mighty good
riddance it will be,--if nothing, I say, of man were left except
fossils of his teeth and his thumbs, a philosopher of that superior
race which will succeed to man would at once see in those relics all
his characteristics and all his history; would say, comparing his
thumb with the talons of an eagle, the claws of a tiger, the hoof of a
horse, the owner of that thumb must have been lord over creatures with
talons and claws and hoofs. You may say the monkey tribe has thumbs.
True; but compare an ape's thumb with a man's: could the biggest ape's
thumb have built Westminster Abbey? But even thumbs are trivial
evidence of man as compared with his teeth. Look at his teeth!"--here
Kenelm expanded his jaws from ear to ear and displayed semicircles of
ivory, so perfect for the purposes of mastication that the most
artistic dentist might have despaired of his power to imitate
them,--"look, I say, at his teeth!" The boy involuntarily recoiled.
"Are the teeth those of a miserable cauliflower-eater? or is it purely
by farinaceous food that the proprietor of teeth like man's obtains
the rank of the sovereign destroyer of creation? No, little boy, no,"
continued Kenelm, closing his jaws, but advancing upon the infant, who
at each stride receded towards the aquarium,--"no; man is the master
of the world, because of all created beings he devours the greatest
variety and the greatest number of created things. His teeth evince
that man can live upon every soil from the torrid to the frozen zone,
because man can eat everything that other creatures cannot eat. And
the formation of his teeth proves it. A tiger can eat a deer; so can
man: but a tiger can't eat an eel; man can. An elephant can eat