TEETH. 163 



to be disguised. The accumulation of blackened food, it is true, may be 

 taken away ; but its removal will leave the interspaces, if possible, stil» 

 more conspicuous. So also the long teeth may be shortened ; but they 

 will not be elevated to the perpendicular, or changed to a filbert form, or 

 restored to the semicircular arrangement. 



The tushes likewise may be regarded. These teeth are sometimes 

 absent in mares, and in animals of the female sex are seldom developed 

 of the size which they commonly exhibit in the male. When first cut, 

 the tush is spear shaped, having well-defined grooves running down its 

 margins. As age advances, all pretension to this form is lost. The 

 tooth either becomes very flat upon its crown or it may be rendered 

 level with the gum ; else it grows very long, looking more like a coarse 

 spike than the organ it really is. Also, when it originally appears in 

 the young mouth, the tush ranges evenly with the parts from which it 

 grows, and points forward. As senility is attained, the member is 

 directed outward ; with extreme old age, it faces backward. The con- 

 traction of the jaw causes the tongue to protrude from the free spaces 

 between the teeth, while the consequent shallowness of the canal formed 

 by the branches of the bone occasions the saliva to dribble forth when 

 the lips are parted. 



The indications of extreme age are always present, and though during 

 a period of senility the teeth cannot be literally construed, nevertheless 

 it should be impossible to look upon the '.' venerable steed " as an animal 

 in its colthood. 



No man can accurately interpret the signs of the teeth after the fifth, 

 year. A guess, more or less correct, can be hazarded ; but nothing like 

 confident judgment can be pronounced subsequent to the period just 

 named. Cases will frequently occur, which shall set our best endeavors 

 to be correct at defiance. But for such instances it is not difficult to 

 account. The Jockey Club may order as it pleases about birthdays; 

 but children and foals will, nevertheless, obtrude upon the world all the 

 year round. Such downright absurdity, as a pretense at controUing the 

 operations of nature, was never perhaps equaled, save by the burlesque 

 monarch depicted by Mr. Planchfe, who, because he is hungry, wills that 

 it be one o'clock, when the sun declares the time to be only twelve. It 

 might be more convenient, certainly, if foals could agree all to put in 

 appearances at a particular date; but until such an arrangement has 

 been entered into by the parties principally concerned, it is idle pre- 

 <?umption for any set of men to issue ordinances which, never being 

 observed, render "confusion worse confounded." 



The difi"erence between the times of birth in various animals, it is 

 true, may cause different aspects in the teeth, and even induce men, in 



