THE AGE OF A HORSE, ll5 



is needless to saj that every horse with determined bone, 

 bog or blood spavin, or with thoroughpin, must be sum- 

 marily rejected, but not needless to say that every one 

 with any tendency to irregular bony enlargement, or to 

 puffiness in the places indicated, should be peremptorily 

 refused as something more than suspicious. 



These are the points which it is most necessary for the 

 purchaser to look to; still, even if he be a really good 

 amateur judge of a horse, he will be wise not to buy 

 except of a person of whom he knows something — ^not to 

 buy without a guaranty of soundness; and above all, not 

 without the opinion of a reputable veterinary surgeon, 

 whom he knows to have no interest in the sale, or friend- 

 ship with the seller. Even so, he will never be perfectly 

 sure that he will not himself be sold ; for, as a distin- 

 guished novelist has well observed, although there is no 

 honester beast in the whole range of creation than a horse, 

 no other has so singular a faculty for making men dis- 

 honest. 



How TO Tell the Age of a Hokse. — The agS of the 

 horse is usually determined by the appearance of the teeth ; 

 of these there are two sets: first the milk teeth, which 

 come before the age of one year ; second, the " permanent 

 set" which come soon after the falling out of the former : 

 this change is completed at the age of five years. 



The teeth which are most uniform in their progression 

 are the nippers or incisors, those on the lower jaw being 

 ordinarily referred to. Of these nippers there are six, — 

 those farthest from the centre are called " corner teeth." 



These corner teeth, and, indeed, all of the nipjiers, are 

 composed of a bony substance which is inclosed in the 

 enamel, which gives hardness to the teeth. Their form is 

 Bomewhat conical, though irregularly so (fig. 1). The top 

 of the newly-formed tooth, say the corner tooth of a five- 



