482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" sheets of wet, slippery rock, and rolling stones in river-beds, would 

 be calculated to try the hoofs to the utmost." 



But it is scarcely necessary to cite more instances of the vast bene- 

 fits which those who have had the courage to leave the feet of their 

 horses as Nature made them have received under the most varied con- 

 ditions of work, of soil, and of climate. Humanity and self-interest 

 here point in the same direction, and only folly of the most perverse 

 kind will have the hardihood to fight for the maintenance of the ex- 

 isting system. The cruelties practiced (whether unwittingly or wan- 

 tonly) on the horse's foot have been extended over a series of genera- 

 tions, but the only penalty which remains to be paid for the ill doing 

 of years is the surrender of a few days or a few weeks of the labor of 

 the animal which has been thus misused. On the other side, there is 

 a certainty that we shall be entering on a course which will triple the 

 length of time over which the efficiency of the horse will be extended, 

 and which, therefore, will, within twenty years, have saved the nation 

 a hundred and thirty-five million sterling. It will further insure the 

 immediate saving of all the money now spent on farriery, and this 

 saving, which must be at the least forty shillings a year on every 

 horse, will amount to two million and a quarter and there will be the 

 further saving in straw as well as on medicines, nostrums, and reme- 

 dies no longer needed for animals rescued from a system which was a 

 fruitful source of discomfort, disease, and death. The angry contro- 

 versies which the subject is now constantly calling forth and exas- 

 perating will at the same time disappear. There will no longer be an 

 outcry for uniformity in the system of paving towns, for horses will 

 go as well on one kind of pavement as on another. There will no 

 longer be querulous demands on inventors for the devising of a perfect 

 shoe, because it will be clearly seen that this perfect shoe has been fur- 

 nished already by nature, and that it is only human ignorance and 

 conceit which has marred the work of God. We may now look back 

 with some feeling of envious regret on the wiser, because more natu- 

 ral, methods of the ancient world ; and future generations will look 

 back with feelings of simple wonderment at the infatuation which 

 could submit without a struggle to a system which doomed the horse 

 to unnecessary disease and agony and to a premature death, while it 

 deprived his owner of wealth often sorely needed for his own welfare 

 and that of all depending on him. Of the ultimate issue there can be 

 no doubt ; but it is still the duty of " Free Lance," as of all whose 

 eyes are opened to the mischiefs of the existing system, to fight the 

 battle to the end. leaser's Magazine. 



