476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cause but the right one, and, indeed, resign themselves complacently 

 to the presence of many diseases confessedly caused by their treat- 

 ment." " Free Lance " has seen, and others also have doubtless seen, 

 light horses, of high breed and value, shod or burdened with a full set 

 of shoes in which eight nails, nearly three sixteenths of an inch in 

 thickness, were driven four in each quarter, and in a space of three 

 inches for each four nails. He may well call attention to the immense 

 amount of laceration and compression which the delicate hollow fibers 

 of the crust must have suffered when thus wedged up within a fourth 

 of their natural dimensions. Besides this, he adds, the hoof was, in 

 one instance, carved out on the crust to receive three clips, one on the 

 toe and one on each quarter. " A calk, three quarters of an inch high, 

 was put on one heel of each hind-shoe, and, on the other heel, a screw 

 cog of equal height. On each front-shoe a cog, also three quarters of 

 an inch high, was put upon each heel. This wretched victim to fash- 

 ion was then regarded with the utmost satisfaction by the farriers and 

 his groom ; and all this heathenism was perpetrated in the forge of a 

 veterinary surgeon. But, perhaps, he was shoeing to order." 



Among the reformers of these great abuses M. Charlier occupies 

 a prominent place. His shoe in its first shape was not successful. 

 Starting rightly on the assumption that Nature intended the horse to 

 walk barefoot, and that the bottom of his foot was in every way fitted 

 to stand all wear and tear, he excepted from these self-sufficing parts 

 the outer rim, that is, the wall or crust. "He, therefore," "Free 

 Lance " tells us, " made a shoe of very narrow iron, less than the width 

 of the wall, which he let in, or imbedded, to the crust, without touch- 

 ing the sole even on the edge ; so that, in fact, the horse stood no 

 higher after he was shod than he stood when barefooted. He urged 

 that such a narrow piece of iron would not interfere with the natural 

 expansion and contraction of the foot ; and in this he at once went 

 wrong, for malleable iron has no spring in it. Then, in spite of his 

 theory, as he expressed it, he carried his shoe right round the foot 

 into the bars, beyond where the crust ceases to be independent of 

 them. He then got a very narrow, weak shoe, about a foot in circum- 

 ference (if circumference can be applied to that which is not a com- 

 plete circle); and, as he ought to have foreseen, the shoe then twisted 

 or broke on violent exertion." Still, as freeing the horse from a large 

 amount of the weight usually attached to his foot, the change was an 

 important benefit ; and the lesson thus taught was not thrown away. 

 The shoe was reduced by a man at Melton from the full to the three- 

 quarter size, and in this form it weighs five ounces. Seeley's patent 

 horseshoe, adopted by the North Metropolitan Tramways Company, 

 weighs one pound and a quarter, this being a reduction of one half on 

 the weight of the ordinary shoe ; and we have to remember that each 

 additional ounce on the horse's foot makes a most sensible difference in 

 the amount of work performed by him during the day. Shoeing their 



