15« ANATOMY AND DISEASES OF THE NOSE AND MOUTH. 



marks from the different cutting-teeth in the upper jaw. Some have averaged it at 

 two years, and others at one. The author is inclined to ado])t the latter opinion, and 

 then the age will be thus detennined : at nine years, the mark will be worn out from 

 the middle nippers — from the next pair at ten, and from all the upper nippers at 

 eleven. During these periods, the tush is likewise undergoing a manifest change^ — 

 it is blunter, shorter, and rounder. In what degree this takes place in the different 

 periods, long and most favourable opportunities for observation can alone enable the 

 horseman to decide. 



The tushes are exposed to hut little wear and tear. The friction against them must 

 be slight, proceeding only from the passage of the food over them, and trom the motion 

 of the tongue, or from the bit; and their alteration of form, although generally as we 

 have described it, is frequently uncertain. The tush will sometimes be blunt at eight; 

 at other times it will remain pointed at eighteen. The upper tush, although the latest 

 in appearing, is soonest worn away. 



Are there any circumstances to guide our judgment after this? There are those 

 which will prepare us to guess at the age of the horse, or to approach within a few 

 years of it, until he becomes very old ; but there are none which will enable us accu- 

 rately to determine the question, and the indications of age must now be taken from 

 the shape of the upper surface of the nippers. At eight, they are all oval, the length 

 of the oval ruiming across from tooth to tooth ; but as the horse gets older, the teeth 

 diminish in size — and this commencing in their width, and not in their thickness. 

 They become a little apart from each other, and their surfaces are rounded. At nine, 

 the centre nippers are evidently so; at ten, the others begin to have the oval shortened. 

 At eleven, the second pair of nippers are quite rounded ; and at thirteen, the corner 

 ones have tiiat appearance. At fourteen, the faces of the central nippers become 

 somewhat triangular. At seventeen, they are all so. At nineteen, the angles begin 

 to wear off, and the central teeth are again oval, but in a reversed direction, viz. from 

 outward, inward ; and at twenty-one, they all wear this form. This is the opinion of 

 some Continental veterinary surgeons, and Mr. Percivall first presented them to us in 

 an English dress. 



It would be folly to expect perfect accuracy at this advanced age of the horse, when 

 we are bound to confess that the rules which we have laid down for determining this 

 matter at an earlier period, although they are recognised by horsemen generally, and 

 referred to in courts of justice, will not guide us in every case. Stabled horses have 

 the mark sooner worn out than those that are at grass ; and a crib-biter may deceive 

 the best judge by one or two years. The age of the horse, likewise, being formerly 

 calculated from the 1st of May, it was exceedingly difficult, or almost impossible, to 

 determine whether the animal was a late foal of one year, or an early one of the next. 

 At nine or ten, the bars of the mouth become less prominent, and their regular dimi- 

 nution will designate increasing age. At eleven or twelve, the lower nippers change 

 their original upright direction, and project forward or horizontally, and become of'^a 

 yellow colour. They are yellow, because the teeth must grow, in order to answer to 

 their wear and tear; but the enamel which covered their surface when they were first 

 produced cannot be repaired ; and that which wears this yellow colour in old age, is 

 the part which in youth was in the socket, and therefore destitute of enamel. 



The general indications of old age, independent of the teeth, are deepening of the 

 hollows over the eyes; grey hairs, and particularly over the eyes and about the 

 muzzle; thinness and hanging down of the lips; sharpness of the withers; sinking 

 of the back ; lengthening of the quarters ; and the disappearance of windgalls, spa- 

 vins, and tumours of every kind. 



Of the natural age of the horse, we should form a very erroneous estimate from the 

 early period at which he is now worn out and destroyed. Mr. Blaine speaks of a 

 geintlernan who had three horses that died at the ages of thirty-five, thirty-seven, and 

 thirty-nine. Mr. Cully mentions one that received'a ball in his neck, m, 'he battle of 

 Preston, in 1715, and which was extracted at his death, in 1758 ; and Mr. Percivall 

 gives an account of a barge-horse that died in his sixtv-second year. 



There cannot be a severer satire on the English nation tlian this, that, from '.he 

 absurd practice of running our rare-horses at two and three venrs old, and working 

 Others, in various ways, long before their limbs are knit or tli'eir strength developed, 



