II] OF HORSES AND MARES 201 



vice. Those who wish to keep herds of these horses 

 and mares, as some do in the Peloponnesus and 

 Apulia, must first consider the question of age, 

 about which the following directions are given: 

 We take care that they (the mares) are not less than 

 2 three or more than ten years old. The age ^ is in- 

 ferred of horses, and generally of all animals with 

 undivided hoofs, and even of horned animals, from 

 the fact that a horse at thirty months first sheds the 



^ Aetas cognoscitur. As in the first book Varro used Theo- 

 phrastus as his principal authority, so in this Aristotle. The 

 latter discusses (H. A., vi, 22) this matter of a horse's teeth 

 thus: **A horse has forty teeth; when thirty months old he 

 ^ sheds the first four (two upper, two lower) ; when a year has 

 gone by he sheds in the same way other four (two upper, two 

 lower) ; and again when another year has passed, other four 

 in the same way; when four years and six months have 

 elapsed he sheds no more." 



The Geoponica (xvi, i) give more details : "At thirty months 

 the foal begins by shedding its front teeth which we call ' in- 

 dsors ' — the two middle ones of each jaw. At the beginning 

 of the fourth year, he loses two on one side (one from each 

 jaw) and two on the other. Then the canine teeth appear. 

 At the commencement of the fifth year he loses the rest — 

 upper and lower — one from each side \sic\ But those which 

 are now growing are hollow. When he has reached the sixth 

 year the hollows of the first begin to fill up, and when he is 

 seven years old he has his full number of teeth, none of which 

 is hollow. And when this has happened it is no longer easy 

 to tell the age." 



Palladius and Columella do not deserve to be quoted. As 

 to the facts Schneider vouches for the accuracy of Varro's 

 Statements, and tells us that when he was writing his com- 

 mentary on the passage, he (Schneider) had a large number 

 of horses' skulls in front of him ! 



