476 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



ample, seldom has any hooks on the coiner teeth, nor do his 

 incisors wear off and change with the usual rapidity. In 

 his case, too, the shrinking away of the gums, by age, is so 

 much less as oftentimes to be hardly perceptible. As his 

 life is much beyond the average of horse-flesh, so his teeth 

 last longer in proportion. To some extent, these remarks 

 will apply also to horses of different mold and frame. Tall, 

 bony animals generally have much older-looking teeth than 

 those of small size and compact build. So have those horses 

 that are kept constantly in stable, than their fellows which 

 run most of the time on pasture. 



Artificial marks are sometimes made in the lower nippers, 

 by a rascally class of jockeys, in order to deceive the pur- 

 chaser in regard to the animal's age. This swindling opera- 

 tion is of English origin, and is thus described by Youatt : 



" It is called bishoping, from the name of the scoundrel who 

 invented it. The horse of eight or nme years old i% thrown, 

 and with an engraver's tool a hole is dug in the now almost 

 plain surface of the corner teeth, and in shape and depth re- 

 sembling the mark in a seven-years-old horse. The hole is 

 then burned with a heated iron, and a permanent black stain 

 is left. The next pair of nippers are sometimes lightly 

 touched. An ignorant man- would be very easily imposed 

 on by this trick; but the irregular appearance of the cavity — . 

 the diffusion of the black stain around the tushes, the 

 sharpened edges and concave inner surface of which can 

 never be given again — the marks on the upper nippers, to- 

 gether with the general conformation of the horse, can never 

 deceive the careful examiner." 



In relation to the means of determining the age of a horse, 

 after passing into his ninth year, the same author has the 

 following remarks : 



"The tushes are exposed to but little wear and tear. The 

 friction against them must be slight, proceeding only from 

 the passage of the food over them, and from the motion of 

 the tongue, or from the bit ; and their alteration of form, al- 

 though generally as we have described it, is frequently un- 



