478 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



bars of the mouth becomes less prominent, and their regular 

 ,diminution will designate increasing age. At eleven or 

 twelve, the loWer nippers change their original upright di- 

 rection, and project forward or horizontally, and become of 

 a yellow color. They are yellow, because the teeth must 

 grow, in order to answer their wear and tear; but the 

 enamel which covered their surface when they were first pro- 

 duced, can not be repaired ; and that which wears this yellow 

 color in old age is the part which in youth was in the 

 socket, and, therefore, destitute of enamel." 



•THE LIPS. 



The lips do not afford a precise index of any particular 

 age ; but as the horse advances beyond eight or nine years, 

 the upper lip begins to contract or shorten, while the under 

 one commences to lengthen and drop down. The latter 

 often pods out much in the form of half a cocoanut-shell, 

 and increasingly so each year. At fifteen, the lips have gen- 

 erally become much wrinkled and shriveled, and as the horse 

 advances in age this indication becomes more and more 

 marked. 



THE HAIR. 



There are several appearances of the hair that betoken 

 age. Perhaps the most conspicuous of them consists in the 

 hair over the eyes, and upon the forehead, turning gray. 

 Thip color generally begins to show when the horse is be- 

 tween ten and twelve years old, and, continuing to grow 

 lighter, as well as to encroach gradually upon the adjacent 

 surfaces, at fifteen it has become a decided mark of age. 

 After the animal has passed his twelfth year, and between 

 that and the sixteenth, a gray horse becomes speckled with 

 innumerable little black spots, giving rise to the peculiar ap- 

 pearance commonly designated as flea-bitten. This singu- 

 larity is very seldom seen in a horse under twelve years of 

 age, frequently not until after he is fifteen. These dark 

 shades increase as long as he lives. 



:ii 



