412 
GIRARD ON THE TEETH 
should have had sufficient reason to lament his untimely death. 
This third edition is by the father, who still survives, an orna¬ 
ment to our profession. He tells us that, at the urgent solicita¬ 
tion of his friends, he has been induced to reprint this little 
work, one of the first essays of an only son, of whom he had che¬ 
rished many a fond hope, and who, occupying, and with so much 
honour to himself and advantage to the art a professor’s chair at 
Alfort at an unparalleled early age, w^as more than realizing every 
wish. 
While the son had been preparing this elucidation of the age 
of our chief patient, the father was busily employed in collecting 
specimens which might elucidate that of the other objects of the 
veterinarian’s care. During the political troubles of 1814, these 
w'ere all dispersed or destroyed. The labours of the son, there¬ 
fore, appeared alone. Twenty years have now passed, and the 
father has the pleasure—a deeply cherished, although a melan¬ 
choly one—of laying before the public a complete work on an im¬ 
portant subject, the age of domesticated animals, the joint pro¬ 
duction of himself and one whom he loved. 
Few additions are made to the treatise on the age of the horse. 
The first expose had been deeply studied and accurately made, 
and admitted of little amendment. M. Girard has, however, 
given in the preface a useful enumeration of the characteristics 
of certain ages, to which the attention of the examiner is to 
be directed when the appearance of the teeth is not conclusive : 
he also gives a very accurate description of the different direction 
which the permanent incisor teeth take when the temporary ones 
have been forcibly removed before their time ; he communi¬ 
cates some novel information with respect to the depth of the 
depression in the incisor teeth, differing more in the different 
teeth of the same horse than many would probably suppose, but 
that difference rarely varying in the same horse, or in horses 
generally, and affording no contemptible auxiliary in ascertaining 
the age, or detecting imposition ; and he states some interesting 
facts as to the influence of climate or temperature in hastening or 
retarding the change of the teeth. In general, however, the 
additions of the father are in the form of notes ; and he seems to 
feel a pride, for which we can readily forgive him, and which the 
merit of the work justifies, to leaving the treatise of his son on 
the age of the horse pure and intact. 
His labours are directed to the completion of the subject as 
it regards the other animals. We trace the natural, pleasing aim, 
to make the work such as he and his son had at first designed 
it to be—to fill up the plan which they had traced out together 
in years long gone by. It is an important subject on which he 
