•^Q2 I30ARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



now acknowledge the shoes they put on so recently as five years 

 ago, and that are figured in the preceding pages as their handiwork. 

 The point for all who would excel in this most necessary and useful 

 art to find out, is, that its secrets, and the welfare of the valuable 

 animals depending on it, are not things to be right or wrong, accord- 

 ing to this or that one's notion, but are based on mechanical and 

 physiological laws, old as creation, and persistent as nature herself; 

 and that whatever the plan be, whether old or new, unless it square 

 itself by these laws, it is naught. 



Hoping, my dear sir, that the foregoing hints, if you think them 

 worthy of publication, may be of some use in your community, 

 Believe me ever yours very truly, 



M. A. Cuming, V. S., 

 Member of the Royal Veterinary College, 



of London and Edinburgh. 



