THE-:- HORSE 



at the exposed ends an indenture known as 

 a cup. At six, these cups disappear from the 

 middle incisors, the use of the teeth wearing 

 the ends smooth. The intermediate and corner 

 incisors still possess the cups at this age. At 

 seven, the cups disappear from the intermedi- 

 ate as well as the middle incisor teeth, and at 

 eight the cups have. also disappeared from the 

 corner ones, so that the animal has what is 

 known as a smooth mouth. 



From this time on as the horse gets older, 

 his teeth look longer, but in reality this is not 

 entirely the case since wear and growth con- 

 tinue to counteract each other as in colthood, 

 but the fact that with age the gums recede 

 also tends to make the teeth of an old horse 

 look longer. The older a horse gets the more 

 the width of his teeth from outside to inside 

 diminishes. In a young horse, when his jaws 

 are closed, the incisor teeth of the upper jaw 

 and lower jaw are inclined to be in the same 

 perpendicular plane. When the horse gets 

 old, however, these teeth tend to make an 

 acute angle with each other; the apex of the 

 angle being where the upper and lower teeth 

 join each other. The older the horse is, the 

 more acute the angle. Very old horses gen- 

 erally have yellow teeth, triangular shaped, 

 while the teeth of a young horse are more 

 oval in appearance. 



87 



