as 
AGE OF ANIMALS. 
deep, and irregular; the two other pairs of nip- 
pers show evidence of increased wearing; the 
tush is much grown, and has nearly lost its 
grooves and become regularly convex, but is still 
concave within, and retains most of the sharp- 
ness of its edge; the sixth grinder is quite up; 
and—what forms by far the most distinctive cri- 
terion of a five-year-old animal, as distinguished 
from a late four-year-old—the third grinder is 
shed. A knave may force up the nippers a few 
months, and the tushes a few weeks, before their 
time ; but he cannot, except in very extraordinary 
circumstances, occasion a premature shedding 
of the third grinder, At this stage, the horse, as 
to the state of his teeth, has experienced his last 
change, and approached within a degree of per- 
fection; for he never sheds his tushes or his last 
three pairs of colt grinders. The appearance of 
his mouth at five years is represented in /2g. 6, 
Plate I. 
The fifth year being the period at which the 
animal is provided with his full set of permanent 
| teeth, we are henceforth compelled in judging of 
his age, to seek for other signs; and these are 
to be met with in the alterations which the teeth 
| themselves undergo, particularly the faces or 
wearing surfaces of the incisive teeth. Thus 
at six years, the central nippers have lost their 
mark, and possess instead of it a slight dis- 
coloration and irregularity; the second pair of 
nippers have their mark shorter, broader, and 
fainter than before; the corner nippers have 
the edges of their enamel more regular before, 
and show evidences of wearing on the surface; 
the tush is full grown, and is convex with- 
out, and concave “within; the third grinder is 
distinctly up; and all the other grinders possess 
one level of surface. At this stage, the teeth 
of the animal, regarded in the aggregate, are in 
their perfect condition. At seven years, the 
second pair of nippers of the lower jaw, as well 
as the first, have wholly lost their mark; the 
corner nippers of the lower jaw have lost a con- 
siderable portion of their mark ; and the tush is 
rounded on the point and the edges, and begin- 
ning to be rounded in the interior. At eight 
years, all the nippers of the lower jaw have totally 
lost their mark; and the tush, in all respects, is 
more rounded than before. /%g. 7 in Plate I. re- 
presents the lower jaw of a horse with the corner 
teeth undergoing their third change, and the pits 
in the others almost or quite obliterated. 
As all criteria of age have now ceased to exist 
on the nippers of the lower jaw, a method of ar- 
tificially renewing the mark on these teeth was 
invented by a rascal of the name of Bishop, and 
is still well-known under the appellation of dishop- 
img. The man who practises this knavery, throws 
down a horse of eight or nine years of age, and 
with an engraver’s tool digs small holes in the 
corner nippers, and small irregularities in the 
other nippers, and then so touches or burns these 
with a heated iron as to make them resemble the 
61 
mark in a horse of seven years of age. But the 
trick is too coarse in its own execution, and too 
much out of keeping with the other appearances 
of the animal’s mouth and body, to deceive an 
experienced or even a careful eye. 
The criteria which we have given of a horse’s 
age, from a few weeks after foaling up to eight 
years, are tolerably uniform and certain, yet must | 
not be regarded as without exceptions or as in- 
fallible. In some individuals the tushes have 
been found blunted and rounded at eight years 
old; in others, they appear still sharp and curved 
at eighteen. A stable-fed horse will lose the mark 
sooner than one fed in the fields; and a horse 
which has the habit of crib-biting may lose it so 
fast as, at some stages of his lifetime, to appear 
to even the best judge twelve, twenty, or twenty- 
four months older than he really is. Under the 
old system, too—which always calculated the age © 
of horses from the first day of May—the most ex- 
perienced judge might have been unable to say 
whether any given animal was a late foal of one | 
year oran early foal of the next.—But from eight | 
years till twenty-one, the criteria become increas- 
ingly indistinct; and after twenty-one, they 
amount to little more than one amassed indica- 
tion of the last stage of existence. The mark of 
the nippers of the upper jaw remains for a con- | 
siderable period after that of the lower nippers is 
effaced ; so that—in a loose sense, or with rather | 
large allowance for variations under diversified | 
circumstances—the extinction of the mark in the | 
central upper nhippers may be viewed as indicat- 
ing nine years of age, the extinction of the mark 
in the second pair of upper nippers as indicating 
ten years, and the extinction of the mark in the 
corner upper nippers as indicating eleven years. 
The shape of the upper surface of the nippers af- 
fords a proximate criterion of age from eight 
years of age to twenty-one. At eight years, all 
the nippers have an oval surface, the length of 
the oval extending parallel with the jaw, or from 
tooth to tooth; at nine, the central nippers are a 
little rounded, or have lost some of their oval 
outline, and are slightly separated from each 
other; at ten, the other nippers begin to be a 
little rounded, and separated; at eleven, the 
second pair of nippers are completely rounded, 
and distinctly separated; at thirteen, the corner 
nippers are completely rounded, and distinctly 
Separated ; at fourteen, the central nippers have 
a somewhat triangular face; at seventeen, all the 
nippers have a somewhat triangular face; at 
nineteen, the central nippers are oval in a re- 
verse direction to the original oval; and at twenty- 
one, all the nippers are oval in a reverse direction 
to the original oval. 
The general indications of old age are various 
and distinct. The teeth of an old horse are yel- 
low, and sometimes brownish. The gums are 
worn and sunk; and occasion a portion of the 
stumps of the teeth to appear long and naked, 
The bars of the mouth, which in youth were al- 
