dged ridge running parallel to the
length of the jaw, the edges of which in corresponding upper and lower
teeth fit and work together like the blades of a pair of scissors. The
cats (including the lions, tigers and leopards) have this arrangement
in perfection (see Figs. 21 and 22). They cut the bones and muscles of
their prey into great lumps with the scissor-like cheek-teeth, and
swallow great pieces whole without mastication. Insect-eating mammals
have cheek-teeth with three or four sharp-pointed tubercles standing
up on the surface. They break the hard-shelled insects and swallow
them rapidly. The fish-eating whales have an immense number of
peg-like pointed teeth only. These serve as do those of the
seals--merely to catch and grip the fish, which are swallowed whole.

It is quite clear that man's cheek-teeth do not enable him to cut
lumps of meat and bone from raw carcases and swallow them whole, nor
to grip live fish and swallow them straight off (Pl. VI). They are
broad, square-surfaced teeth, with four or fewer low rounded tubercles
fitted to crush soft food, as are those of monkeys (see Pl. VII and
its description). And there can be no doubt that man fed originally,
like monkeys, on easily crushed fruits, nuts, and roots. He could not
eat like a cat.

A fundamental mistake has arisen amongst some of the advocates of
vegetarianism by the use of the words "carnivorous" and "flesh-eating"
in an ill-defined way. Man has never eaten lumps of raw meat and bone,
and no one proposes that he should do so to-day. Man did not take to
meat-eating until he had acquired the use of fire, and had learnt to
cook the meat before he ate it. He thus separated the bone and
intractable sinew from the flesh, which he rendered friable and
divisible by thorough grilling, roasting, or baking. To eat meat thus
altered, both chemically and in texture, is a very different thing
from eating the raw carcases of large animals. Man's teeth are
thoroughly fitted for the trituration of cooked meat, which is,
indeed, as well suited to their mechanical action as are fruits, nuts,
and roots. Hence we see that the objection to a meat diet based on the
structure of man's teeth does not apply to the use of cooked meat as
diet. The use by man of uncooked meat is not proposed or defended.

Yet, further, it is well to take notice of the fact that there are
many vegetarian wild animals which do not hesitate to eat certain soft
animals or animal product