TEMPORARY DENTITION 393 



devices are adopted for the purpose of, in tlie first place, facilitating the 

 cutting of the permanent teeth to make young horses look older than they 

 are, and, on the other hand, to restore the " mark " when it is obliterated, 

 for the purj^ose of making old horses look younger. 



The extraction of the temporary teeth will undoubtedly assist the 

 development of the permanent organs beneath them, and if the operation 

 is properly done the deception would not be detected; but as a professional 

 operator would not be likely to be consulted in the matter, it is usually 

 badly done, and defeats its object, either by destroying the germ of the 

 new tooth below and leaving an obvious gap in the mouth, or by causing 

 it to be displaced, and in that way leading to a derangement of the dental 

 line. The second form of deception, termed "bishoping", is probably rarely 

 or never practised now. It consists in carving a properly-shaped cavity in 

 the extremely hard bone of an old tooth and making it black by heat, 

 a performance which would rec[uire great mechanical skill and most perfect 

 apparatus, and, however well performed, certainly would not deceive any- 

 one who had the slightest claim to be an anatomist or a judge of a 

 horse. 



Birthdays. — It is usual to preface a description of the means of 

 judging the age of the horse with the statement of dates, which are some- 

 what arbitrarily fixed as birthdays, and also to interpret certain qualifying 

 terms which are constantly employed. 



The ages of thoroughbred horses are dated from January 1st, and of 

 other horses from May 1st. The animal which is approaching the termina- 

 tion of any given year is said to be "coming" the age; if the birthday has 

 passed, he is said to be " off". Thus " coming four" is taken to mean that 

 the horse wants about three months of the full age, and " four off" would 

 indicate that his fourth birthday had passed about three months previously. 

 The expert, however, will judge of a horse's age by the state of his teeth, 

 without concerning himself about the dates which have been artificially 

 fixed, and are indeed to a certain extent convenient. 



TEMPORARY DENTITION 



It is not a matter of much importance to be able to judge the age of a 

 foal during the first few months, nor of a colt during the first year or two 

 of its life, but in order to make the history of the evidence which the teeth 

 afford complete, it is necessary to begin with the animal's birth. The first 

 teeth, it is understood, are known as milk teeth, and at the time of l)irth 

 the foal has four incisors in top and bottom jaws, and three molars on each 

 side of the upper and lower jaws. All these teeth are entirely, or nearly 



