44 OF THE TEETH. 



tushes cannot be restored by similar means ; nor can the 

 aged position and appearance of the tables of the teeth be 

 affected by this artifice. 



The judgment formed from the teeth, though generally 

 to be depended on when these frauds have not been 

 practised, is yet liable to some error from other causes 

 than these. Some horses living wholly on grain, and very 

 early worked, will occasionally be found to have gained on 

 others which have fed principally on succulent matter. In 

 those which champ much on the bit, this variation may be 

 very considerable, and make a full year's difference between 

 them and others. It remains again to remark, that a too 

 strict adherence to the teeth-marks very frequently leads 

 those who are only moderate judges into very great error in 

 another way ; which is, that of frequently causing them to 

 reject the most useful and valuable horses without these, 

 marks, as being supposed past their work. Nothing is 

 more fallacious than this : the commonly received indices 

 of the age grant an assurance that the animal has not 

 passed a third of its natural life ; nor one half of the time 

 in which he is perfectly useful, and fully capable of answer- 

 ing all the purposes for which he was intended. It is 

 only in a country like our own, where these generous crea- 

 tures are so early put to labour, and so unremittingly 

 forced to pursue it, that this mark is so much attended to. 

 A subordinate attention only should be paid to the appear- 

 ance of the teeth, if a horse appear what is termed fresh 

 and sound ; that is, if all his organs be capable of their 

 several functions, the Timbs being firm, and exhibiting no 

 appearance of too early, too great, or too long continued 

 exertion. The early ruin of English horses is not only to 

 be attributed to the excellence of the roads and the calls of 

 business, which urge our horses onward, but it is equally 

 to be laid to the account of their being worked before the 

 maturity of the system is perfected, or the motar organs 

 completely evolved. The premature exertion forces nature 

 into artificial means of strengthening the debilitated organs ; 

 hence the cavities between the tendons and their sheaths are 

 destroyed : parts take on a bony structure, whose original 

 formation was cartilaginous, as the lateral cartilages of the 



