DURATION OF THE LIFE OF THE HORSE. 47 



and may still be sound and healthy at thirty years. The other 

 ones, on the contrary, — those which attain their growth in four 

 years, — rarely pass the age of twenty." 



The great, heavy draft-horses, which attain their growth in 

 even less time, are already aged at ten or twelve years. Exam- 

 ples of horses of thirty, thirty-six, and forty years of age would 

 not be so rare among our animals if the tyranny and hard usage 

 imposed upon them by men did not aid greatly to shorten their 

 lives. Ordinarily, as soon as a horse has seen its best days, it is 

 sold from the stable in which it has been kept, to be replaced by 

 more useful animals, and it goes rapidly into the hands of the 

 hackman and the huckster, doing harder work with less nour- 

 ishment, until it becomes completely used up, and depreciates to 

 the value of the knacker's price. 



Among the principal causes which modify the longevity of 

 the horse may be counted the length of time of development, 

 the size of the horse, the work to which the animal is put, and 

 the care which it receives. 



We find certain races and certain individuals which are pre- 

 cocious in their development, and other races and subdivisions 

 of families in which longevity is hereditary. 



M. Boulev says: "There are tardy races and precocious 

 races. In the last the precocity is the result of the combined 

 influence of heredity and alimentation, in which the organic 

 formation acts in a precipitous way, as it were, in those in- 

 dividuals which compose it, and we find a hasty achievement of 

 development ; from which it results that the duration of their 

 first part of life is so much shortened, and, as a fatal conse- 

 quence, also that of tlieir whole life ; for this more rapid de- 

 velopment, impressed on their organisms, has no other termina- 

 tion, from the industrial point of view, which produces it, than 

 to hasten the moment of death." 



The small races of horses and small individuals last usually 

 for a longer time than larger ones. AVe can make no satisfac- 

 tory explanation of this, unless it is that in the larger animals 

 the wear and tear is greater from the very fact of the animal 



