HORSES AND THEIR FEET. 473 



inches, and killing it from the clinches downward and outward." It 

 is strange that veterinary surgeons who have clearly comprehended 

 the mischief thus caused have failed to draw the logical inference from 

 their premises. Mr. Douglas was aware that the crust of the horse's 

 foot resembles in its natural state a number of small tubes, bound to- 

 gether by a hardened, glue-like substance, and he compares it to a 

 mitrailleuse gun with its many barrels soldered together. By his way 

 of nailing, M. la Fosse was reducing the size of each tube by one sixth, 

 or rather was entirely closing those nearest the nails and compressing 

 those that lie half-way between each pair of nails. He was in this 

 respect aggravating the mischief of the ordinary shoe, which commonly 

 has seven nails ; and this insured dryness and brittleness of hoof. 

 But the circulation of fluid through the pores of the hoof is not the 

 only natural process which modern shoeing interferes with. In his 

 work on the horse's foot, Mr. Miles illustrates the expansion and con- 

 traction which always take place in its natural state when it is set 

 down on and lifted from the ground. The subject was a horse nine 

 years old, which had the shoe removed for the purpose of the experi- 

 ment. " The unshod foot was lifted up, and its contour traced with 

 the greatest precision on a piece of board covered with paper. A 

 similar board was then laid on the ground ; the same foot was then 

 placed upon it, and the opposite foot held up while it was again traced. 

 The result was that it had expanded one eighth part of an inch at the 

 heel and quarters." Over two inches on each side of the center of the 

 toe no expansion had taken place, the tracings showing that the expan- 

 sion was only lateral. It would follow that a shoe intended to give 

 full play to this process must be confined to the part where no expan- 

 sion takes place ; but Mr. Miles adhered to the form of the ordinary 

 shoe, although he reduced to three the number of nails by which it 

 was fastened. The object of this process of expansion and contraction 

 is to give the animal a firmer hold on the soil, and to enable him, where 

 this is thick, slimy, or sticky, to withdraw the foot easily on contrac- 

 tion. This purpose is necessarily defeated when the whole foot is 

 armed with iron. 



No one has condemned the mischievous working of the existing 

 system more strongly than Mr. Mayhew, who refuses to allow that the 

 body of the horse was made stronger than his legs and feet, and holds 

 that these, if left to themselves, must be adequate to the tasks imposed 

 on them. In his belief, " it is among the foremost physiological truths, 

 that Nature is a strict economist," and that " man has for ages la- 

 bored to disarrange parts thus admirably adjusted. . . . No injury, no 

 wrong, no cruelty, can be conceived, which barbarity has not inflicted 

 on the most generous of man's many willing slaves." But, although 

 he has thus seen "the folly of contending against those organizations 

 which govern the universe," he still thought that the employment of 

 some sort of shoe might not lie open to this charge. Shoes of some 



