48 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



proper functions of any part of its body (and the abomination of bear- 

 ing-reins and other such practices interfere with them grievously and 

 even fatally), we bring it under no conditions which it was not design- 

 edly calculated to encounter. Private owners and companies whose 

 horses must be numbered by troops are naturally irritated by the 

 accidents constantly occurring on smooth and slimy pavements or on 

 rough and hard stone or flint roads, and in their disgust they now 

 offer rewards for the invention of a shoe which shall render the horse 

 indifferent to the materials over which he has to pass, and clamor for 

 a uniform system of pavements in all towns. It seems strange indeed 

 that no misgiving seems to cross their minds that they are taking 

 thought of the wrong surface, and that they are scared by false terrors 

 when they dread the contact of the unshod hoof with sand, granite, 

 flint, w^ood, or asphalt. 



It can not, indeed, be too often repeated or too strongly insisted on, 

 that the foot of the horse in no way needs to rest on soft and yielding 

 surfaces. The very opposite of this is the truth, and this truth was 

 perceived as clearly by Xenophon as by the ablest physiologists of 

 our own day. Speaking, as he says, not from theory, but from wide 

 and varied experience, Xenophon insists that, in order to insure the 

 healthiness of horses, stable-floors must not be smooth or damp, that 

 they should be lined with stones of irregular shapes, of much the same 

 size as the animal's hoof, and that the ground outside the stable, on 

 which it is groomed, should be covered in parts with loose stones laid 

 down in large quantities, but surrounded by an iron rim to prevent 

 their being scattered. Standing on these, the horse, Xenophon ad'ds, 

 will be in much the same condition as if he were traveling on a stony 

 road, and, as he must move his hoof when he is being rubbed down as 

 much as when he is walking, the stones thus spread about will strengthen 

 the frogs of his feet. It is not easy to repress a certain feeling of shame 

 at the disinwenuousness of modern writers who have tried to shirk the 

 difficulty by saying that Xenophon had no knowledge of our hard 

 roads. It is enough to reply that he speaks distinctly of roads 

 covered with stones, and of the benefit which the horse derives from 

 traversing them. There is not a word to justify a suspicion that he 

 would have shrunk from the hardest roadway of modern times. Xeno- 

 phon is thus in complete agreement with Lord Pembroke's remark, 

 that the constant use of litter in a stable makes the feet tender and 

 causes swelled legs. In his judgment the bare stone pavement will 

 cool, harden, and improve a horse's feet merely by his standing on it. 

 Acting on the same principle, Vegetius, as " Free Lance " remarks, 

 holds that the floor of the stable should be made, not of soft wood, 

 but of solid hard oak, which will make the foot of the horse as hard 

 as a rock. It should surely be unnecessary to say that these writers 

 make not the remotest reference or allusion to the shoeing of horses. 

 It was impossible that they could notice a practice which was unknown 



