642 THE EXTERIOR OF THE HORSE. 



PART II. 



DETERMINATION OF THE AGE. 



CHAPTER I. 



DURATION OF LIFE IN THE HORSE. 



According to Buffon/ " the duration of the life of horses is, as in 

 all the other species of domestic animals, proportional to the duration of 

 their period of growth or increase. A man, in whom this period is 

 fourteen years, can live six or seven times this space of time, — that is to 

 say, ninety or a hundred years ; the horse, whose period of increase con- 

 tinues throughout four years, can live six or seven times as long, — that 

 is to say, twenty-five or thirty years." 



According to Bourgelat,^ " one can suppose the ordinary life of a 

 horse to continue eighteen or twenty years, the number of those which 

 surpass this time being very small, Aristotle observed that horses 

 kept in stables live a much shorter time than those which run at 

 large ; the state of stabulation and domestication are well calculated 

 to produce some differences. Athenaeus and Pliny claimed that 

 horses have been known to live sixty-five and even seventy years. 

 Augustus Nipheus also speaks of the horse of Ferdinand I. as a septu- 

 agenarian horse, but these last observations are only exceptions, similar 

 in the equine species to those which sometimes take place in the human 

 species. . . ." 



" The life of mares," says Hartmann,^ " is ordinarily longer than 

 that of the males. This observation, already made by Aristotle (Hist. 

 Animal., vol. v.), corresponds to that made at different periods upon 

 the human species, in which the females generally live longer than the 

 males. 



" It is an indubitable sign that a stud-horse is of a good race, or at 



> Buffon, Histoire naturelle g6n6rale et particuliSre, t. iv. p. 226. 



* Bourgelat, Trait6 de la conformation extf-rieure du cheval, 2e 6d., Paris, 1775, p. 286. 



» Hartmann, Traits des haras, etc., translated from the German, Paris, 1788, p. 32. 



