Notwithstanding cremation, which certainly must have destroyed a great number of the dental appliances of that time, and in spite of the many different destructive agents which successively did their work on those human remains during so many centuries, not a few prosthetic pieces of Etruscan workmanship have come down to us; from which we may argue that dental prosthesis was not an exceptional fact among this people, as some may perhaps suppose, but, on the contrary, must have been a very usual practice. The dental appliances discovered up to now among Etruscan remains are preserved in different Italian museums, with the exception of some few existing in private collections or of others that have passed out of Italy into other countries. In the museum of Pope Julius in Rome there is a dental appliance found at Valsiarosa in one of the many Etruscan tombs excavated in that locality near Civita Castellana, the ancient Falerii (Fig. 15). This appliance is formed by a series of four gold rings meant to encircle four teeth (canine, bicuspids, and first molar). The third ring is traversed by a pivot riveted at the two extremities, which was meant to hold fast an artificial tooth (the second bicuspid); this is wanting, however. One naturally puts the question. How is the disappearance of this tooth to be accounted for, it having been traversed by the pivot, which is still found in its place? The suppositions are two: Either the artificial tooth was made of some not very durable material, which, in the course of time, became reduced to powder or fell to pieces, or may have been destroyed in some other way; or else the artificial tooth, instead of being simply perforated to allow the pivot to pass through, was cleft longitudinally at its base and, being introduced into the ring sat, so to speak, astride the pivot. In the second case, which, however, seems to me the less probable of the two, the tooth may merely have come off the pivot and gotten lost. In the Civic Museum of Corneto, the ancient Tarquinii, there are two dental appliances, one of which (Figs. 16 and 17) is of the greatest interest. It was found in one of the most ancient tombs in the necropolis of Tarquinii. This specimen of prosthesis is formed of three teeth; the two upper central incisors and the second bicuspid on the left, which is no longer in existence. [Illustration: FIG. 15 Etruscan appliance found at Valsiarosa, destined to support an artificial bicuspid, now disappeared.]