OF THE TEETH. 45 



feet, and the articular processes of the vertebrcie ; a greater 

 quantity of ossific matter is deposited on tlie surface of 

 some bones than is natural, forming splints, spavins, ring- 

 bones, &c. : and to counteract the unnatural waste, other 

 secretions are likewise preternaturally augmented, producing 

 windgalls. But where horses are suffered to attain their 

 full growth, and the complete evolution of their stamina, if 

 they are afterwards put to full exercise, not altogether 

 inordinate, they become competent to the exertions expected 

 of them, and reach old age sound and vigorous. Many 

 good judges will not purchase a horse for hunting earlier 

 than eight years old, and regard him only in his prime at 

 ten or twelve. It is too little considered, that the period 

 of a horse's life, with moderate care and good usage, is 

 protracted to twenty-five, thirty-five, and forty-five years ; 

 and an instance lately occurred of a horse dying at fifty. 

 The accounts of their being vigorous and strong at thirty, 

 and thirty-five, are very numerous ; and nearly as frequent 

 as activity in men of eighty and ninety. A gentleman at 

 Dulwich, near London, has three monuments of three 

 horses, who severally died in his possession at the ages of 

 thirty-five, thirty-seven, and thirty-nine. The oldest, it is 

 to be remarked, was in a carriage the very day he died, 

 strong and vigorous ; but was carried off in a few hours by 

 spasmodic colic, to which he was subject. At Chesham, 

 in Buckinghamshire, there was a horse of thirty-six years 

 old, who exhibited no symptoms of debility, nor any ex- 

 ternal signs of age. It was remarkable, with regard to this 

 four-footed Nestor, that when an unusual hard day's work 

 was required, he was always chosen, as never failing in what 

 was expected from him. A horse named Wonder, belong- 

 ing to the riding-school at Woolwich, may be quoted as 

 living to forty years. 



Mr. CuUey, in his Observations on Live Stock, mentions 

 a horse he knew which lived to the age of forty-seven 

 years, having during the greater part of that time a ball in 

 his neck, received in the battle of Preston, and which was 

 extracted at his death : for, judging him at four years at 

 the time he received the wound (and it is probable he was 

 more), he must, at his death, have been fortv-seven. But 



