60 pliny's natural history. [Book XI. 



Timarchus, the son of Nicocles the Paphian, had a double 38 

 row of teeth in his jaws : the same person had a brother also 

 who never changed his front teeth, and, consequently, wore 

 them to the very stumps. There is an instance, also, of a man 

 having a tooth growing in the palate. 39 The canine teeth, 40 

 when lost by any accident, are never known to come again. 

 "While in all other animals the teeth grow of a tawny colour 

 with old age, with the horse, and him only, they become whiter 

 the older he grows. 



CHAP. 64. HOW AN ESTIMATE IS EORMED OF THE AGE 



OF ANIMALS FROM THEIR TEETH. 



The age, in beasts of burden, 41 is indicated by the teeth. In 

 the horse they are forty in number. At thirty months it 

 loses the two fore-teeth in either jaw, and in the following year 

 the same number next to them, at the time that the eye-teeth 42 

 come. At the beginning of the fifth year the animal loses two 

 teeth, which grow again in the sixth, and in the seventh it has 

 all its teeth, those which have replaced the others, and those 

 which have never been changed. If a horse is gelded 43 before 

 it changes its teeth, it never sheds them. In a similar manner, 

 also, the ass loses four of its teeth in the thirtieth month, and 

 the others from six months to six months. If a she-ass hap- 

 pens not to have foaled before the last of these teeth are shed, 

 it is sure to be barren. 44 Oxen change their teeth at two years 

 old: with swine they are never changed. 46 "When these 

 several indications of age have been lost in horses and other 

 beasts of burden, the age is ascertained by the projecting of 

 the teeth, the greyness of the hair in the eyebrows, and the 

 hollow pits that form around them ; at this period the animal 

 is supposed to be about sixteen 46 years old. In the human 



38 This is not very uncommon. 



39 Not at all an uncommon occurrence. 



40 Of the second set. 



41 It is only in the horse and the ass that these indications can be re- 

 lied upon. 42 Columellares. 



43 This has no such effect. 



44 The contrary is the case : it will he more prolific. 

 43 Swine change them just the same as other animals. 



46 By certain appearances in the incisors, the age of a horse up to its 

 twenty-fourth year, or even beyond, may be judged of: the other signs 

 cannot be so positively relied upon. 



