STtJD BOOK. 73 



A three-year-old colt has his form and energies much 

 more developed than a two-year-old one, and is considerably 

 more valuable; therefore some dishonest breeders endeavor 

 to pass him upon the unwary as being a year older than he 

 really is, and they accomplish this, in an ingenious but cruel 

 manner, by punching or drawing out these teeth. This can- 

 not, however, be effected until a portion of the second year is 

 past, when the permanent teeth below are beginning to press 

 upon the roots of their predecessors, and then the breeder 

 extracts the central milk-teeth. Those below, having no 

 longer anything to resist their progress, grow far more rap- 

 idly than they otherwise would do, and the scoundrel gains 

 four or five months in the apparent age of his colt. 



Can this trickery be detected ? Not always, except by 

 one who is well accustomed to horses. The comparatively 

 slow wasting of the other nippers, the difference of the de- 

 velopment of these nippers in the upper and under jaw for 

 the breeder usually confines his roguery to the lower jaw, the 

 upper one being comparatively seldom examined these cir- 

 cumstances, together with a deficiency of general develop- 

 ment in the colt, will sufficiently enable the purchaser to 

 detect the attempted cheat. 



The honest mouth of a three-year-old horse should be 

 thus formed : the central teeth are palpably larger than the 

 others, and have the mark on their upper surface evident and 

 well defined. They will, however, be lower than the other 

 teeth. The mark in the next pair of nippers will be nearly 

 worn away, and that in the corner nippers will have begun 

 to wear. 



At three years and a-half the second nippers will be 

 pushed from their sockets, and their place gradually sup- 

 plied by a new pair; and at four and a-half the corner nip- 

 pers wOl be undergoing the same process. Thus at four 

 years old the central nippers will be fully grown: the next 

 pair will be up, but will not have attained their full height ; 

 and the corner nippers will be small, with their mark nearly 

 effaced. At five years old the mark will begin to be effaced 

 from the central teeth; the next pair will be fully grown, and 

 the blackness of the mark a little taken off; and the corner 

 pair will be protruding or partly grown. 



At this period, or between the fourth and fifth year, an- 

 other change will take place in the mouth of the horse; the 

 tushes will have begun to appear. There will be two of 

 them in each jaw, between the nippers and the grinders, con- 

 siderably nearer to the former than the latter, and particu- 



