AGE OF THE HOESK. 57 



THE AGE AND DENTAL SYSTEM OF THE HOESE. 



" There* is some difficulty in estimating the natural average 

 length of the horse's life, for many obstacles opi3ose an inquiry 

 on a scale of sufficient magnitude to be satisfactory. The nu- 

 merous evils entailed on him by the arduous labors and the 

 restricted and unnatural habits of a domesticated state tend 

 greatly to abbreviate '!ife. * * * From these and other 

 reasons it cannot be much doubted that his age is generally 

 underrated. Horses are most erroneously f termed aged^ on 

 the obliteration of the marTc from the lower incisor teeth, which 

 occurs by the completion of the eighth year, and though it is 

 far from being the natural term of age and debility, or even of 

 decline of the vital energies, it too frequently happens that, by 

 that time, bodily infirmities have been prematurely induced by 

 over-exertion of their powers. 



* * * " Horses at twenty years old, are often met with 

 in cases where the least humanity has been bestowed on their 

 management. Eclipse died at the age of twenty-five ; Flying 

 Childers at twenty-six. Burns' mare Maggie attained more 

 than twenty-nine years ? Bucephalus, the celebrated horse of 

 Alexander of Macedon, lived till thirty. The natural age is 

 probably between % twenty-five and thirty years. A faint and 

 uncertain guide is found in the register of the ages of our most 

 celebrated racing stallions, recollecting, however, that several 

 of them were destroyed on becoming useless for the purposes 

 of the turf. The united ages of ninety-three of these horses 

 amounted to two thousand and five years, or rather better than 

 twenty-one and a half years each horse." 



Here follow, in Mr, Winter's text, many citations, from au- 



* Winter on the Horse, p. 141. 



f It does not appear to me that the error lies in the term, but in the misappre- 

 hension of it. The eight-year-old horse is called aged^ as the twenty-one-year-old 

 man is said to be of age ; and the maturity, not the decline, of his age is implied. 

 This is clear from the fact that so soon as he is aged he begins to carry maximum 

 weight, which he carries /or ever after, so long as he runs. The impossibility of defi- 

 nitely ascertaining his years after that term, renders the farther apportionment of 

 weight for age impossible. H. W. H. 



X Whalebone, by Waxy, out of Penelope, own brother to Whisker and Woful, 

 covered mares at twenty-four years. H. W. H. 



