SEVEN-YEAR-OLD MOUTH. 



69 



is rounded at the point, rounded at the edges, still round without, 

 and beginning to get round inside. 



" At eight years old, the tush is rounder in every way ; the 

 mark is gone from all the bottom nippers, and it may almost 

 be said to be out of the mouth. TJiere is nothhu/ remaining 

 in the hottom nippers that can aft^rxoard clearly show the age of 

 the horse, or justify the most experienced examiner in giving a 

 positive opinion ! * 



" Dishonest dealers have been said to resort to a method of 

 prolonging the mark in the lower nippers. It is called Bishop- 

 ing, from the name of the scoundrel who invented it. The 

 horse of eight or nine years old — for his mouth, see fig. 11 — ^is 

 thrown, and with an engra- Fig. il 



ver's tool a hole is dug in the 

 now almost plain surface of the 

 corner teeth, in shape resem- 

 bling the mark yet left in those 

 of a seven-year-old horse. The 

 hole is then burned with a 

 heated iron, and a permanent 

 black stain is left. The next 

 pair of nippers are sometimes 

 slightly touched. An ignorant 

 man would be very easily deceived by this trick ; but the ir- 

 regular appearance of the cavity, the diffusion of the black 

 stain around the tushes, the sharpened edges and concave inner 

 surface of which can never be given again, the marks on the 

 upper nippers, together with the general conformation of the 

 horse, can never deceive the careful examiner. 



" Horsemen, after the animal is eight years old, are accus- 

 tomed to look to the nij^pers in the upper jaw, and some conclu- 



* I have myself italicised this passage, because it is a common error in the 

 United States, and one especially insisted on by dealers having old horses to sell, 

 that the age can be positively ascertained even to ten, eleven or twelve years, so 

 that it can be predicated of a horse that he is so old and no older ! This is an abso- 

 lute fallacy. It is easy, from many general signs, to see that a horse is above eight 

 years old, but impossible to judge certainly how much older ! The length and an- 

 gularity of the nippers, the depth of the super-orbital cavities, and other points of 

 conformation, may enable a good judge to gv£ss comparatively, but never to speak 

 surely. H. W. H. 



