IRREGULARITIES OF THE DENTAL APPARATUS. 761 



The seller may, in certain cases, find it to his interest to manipulate 

 the teeth of a horse so that they show an artificial wear, capable of 

 simulating that of cribbing properly so called. 



How can we recognize the employment of this fraudulent practice f 



This is ordinarily very easy. 



If the abnormal wear has been produced by a file, the marks of the 

 latter can be seen on the teeth. If, after having made a surface of 

 friction artificially, the latter be polished to remove these marks, the 

 fraud can be detected by the fact that the enamel is perfectly on a level 

 with the dentine, and not (as when the wear is natural) in relief upon 

 it, as we have already mentioned. 1 



Besides, those who perform these tricks do not always take the 

 precaution or have not the ability to make upon the incisors a surface 

 of wear in accordance with the nature of the object on which it was 

 produced. Hence it seems to us insufficient that the prosecutor should 

 place in evidence only the reality of this wear ; it is, moreover, necessary 

 that he should furnish the proof that it is certainly due to cribbing. 

 This is what the expert should not forget. 



The determination of the age is particularly difficult in cribbing horses, 

 because the dental tables are in most cases partly destroyed by the fric- 

 tion which they have sustained. But in many instances the experienced 

 observer gets over the difficulty by reconstituting, in imagination, the 

 normal length and the normal form of the incisors. By considering 

 the portions still present, it is possible to reconstruct the teeth such as 

 they would have been if all the conditions had remained normal. It 

 is this sort of dental restoration which we have endeavored to repre- 

 sent in the drawings that accompany our description ; it is a great aid 

 to those who are but little experienced. 



Other indirect methods also lead to a recognition of the age of crib- 

 bers: we refer to the careful examination of the teeth least affected 

 by the habit, especially the corners, which are less frequently abnor- 

 mally worn by reason of their situation upon the lateral parts of the 

 arcades ; the superior incisors, the molars, and the buccal mucous 

 membrane ; the characters to be drawn from the direction, the length, 

 the width, and the coloration of the teeth ; the general aspect of the 

 subject, the form of his bead, the thickness of his jaws, the state of his 

 temples, of his supra-orbits, etc. ; in a word, all the characters, how- 

 ever weak they may be, capable of elucidating the question as to 

 whether the animal is young or old. 



Arm. Goubaux, Bulletin de la Soci<t6 v<t<rinaire, ann<5e 1849, p. 131. 



