752 THE EXTERIOR OF THE HORSE. 



never be neglected at the time of purchasing a horse ; in this respect 

 it is of the greatest importance in relation to the exterior. 



8. Irregularities of W^ear resulting from Cribbing. 



If the incisors of a horse be examined, we sometimes find irregu- 

 larities of their borders, their faces, or their tables. They are due to 

 diverse causes, concerning which it is necessary to make some important 

 diiferentiation. 



Many irritable and nervous horses have, in fact, the bad habit of 

 biting their fastenings or some surrounding object when they are ap- 

 proached, when they are caressed, or when they are groomed by the 

 attendant. There results from this, in time, a sort of breaking off 

 of the free border of their teeth, which makes them irregular, and 

 which must not be confounded with the abnormal wear produced by 

 cribbing. [In such a case the border is generally roughened and 

 broken oif in small particles ; in cribbing, as we shall see farther on, 

 the dental border is perfectly smooth.] Although these modifications 

 of the dental apparatus may already be of a nature to complicate the 

 determination of the age, they nevertheless do not alter the form of 

 the incisors so profoundly that the observer cannot, without difficulty, 

 deduce sufficient signs to this effect, should he be called upon to pass 

 his opinion upon the animal submitted to him for examination. 



The incisors likewise do not show any wear in that variety of 

 cribbing which consists most ordinarily in swallowing air without 

 fixing the teeth on a foreign body, and which, for this reason, we 

 proposed, in 1866, to designate aeropinic, to distinguish it from the 

 other varieties.^ The French law of May 20, 1838, included cribbing 

 in the number of redhibitory vices, but on condition that it did not 

 imply the marking of the teeth. 



In order to avoid the numerous cases of litigation which arose from 

 the defective wording of this law, the legislature in 1884 judiciously 

 substituted for the words cribbing without marking of the teeth those 

 of cribbing properly so called, with or without marking of the teeth. 

 Henceforth experts will no longer have to discuss the nature of the 

 vicious habit in question or the characters of the wear of the tooth ; it 

 will suffice for them to ascertain the existence of cribbing properly so 

 called, as to the signs of which all are agreed ; this alone is of a nature 

 to lead to a nullification of the sale, according to the terms of Article 

 II. of the French law of August 2, 1884. 



1 Arm. Goubaux, Journal de medecine v6t6rinaire publi6 k I'Ecole de Lyon ; ann^e 1866, 

 p. 349. 



