THE BLOODSTONE CASE. 
545 
were represented to be older by a year than they in truth were : in 
both, the signs afforded by the teeth — to say nothing about any other 
— belied those representations. Had either cause been lost, the 
defeat must have cast a murky shadow over professional opinions 
concerning age, which, in the present generation at least, would 
hardly have been dispelled by any remonstrances, however cogent, 
on our part. We, as veterinary surgeons professing to tell the ages 
of horses, must have “ hid our diminished heads,” and have shrunk 
from the obloquy of not being able to distinguish a two-year from a 
three-year- old colt, or a three from a four-year old. Each time age 
became a question, we should have had tauntingly cast in our 
teeth the remembrances of the cases Bloodstone and Running Rein. 
The mouth of the so-called Bloodstone presented four perma- 
nent incisor teeth, all fully developed, and even exhibiting upon 
their faces marks of attrition ; likewise prominences over the lateral 
(temporary) teeth, shewing that the lateral permanent ones were 
nearly at hand ; and, moreover, had tushes in the upper jaw promi- 
nent underneath the buccal membrane, with tushes perceptible 
enough to the feeling (likewise, of course, sub-membranous) in the 
nether jaw ; added to which, he was known and acknowledged to 
have been foaled on the 26th of April ; and yet, forsooth, on the 6th 
of August, presenting a mouth such as we have described, the colt 
was pronounced — sworn — not to have attained his third year ! 
Even had additional proofs been wanting, Nature, true to her pur- 
pose, had still provided them. The first and second molar teeth 
were become permanent; and it was manifest to every one at all 
conversant with horses, that the form and furnishing of the body 
were altogether that of a three not of a two-year-old. 
In the face of all this natural development, furnishing indications 
that have on no previous occasion been known to deceive us to the 
extent of a whole year, and with a knowledge before the parties of 
the month in which the foal was dropped — both the feigned and the 
real Bloodstone having been foaled in (he month of April — it has 
given us pain to read such contradiction in the professional evi- 
dence. How a colt dropped in April can in the month of August 
be pronounced to be “ thirty months old,” is reasoning we cannot 
understand ; and as for his being but two years old, no person ever 
yet saw a two-year-old with such a mouth as the so-called Blood- 
VOL. XVII. 4 c 
