ON HORSESHOES. 141 



in the feminine tense ; possibly this may have been dictated by 

 " poetical license." This we would of course all of us admire. 



Xenophon, who led the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks 

 (and what a march and over what a country was this !), and who 

 wrote as a first authority on veterinary matters, teaches thus : 



" The right way in which to treat the horse's foot and to 

 toughen it, is to let him stand at all time on the hardest stone, 

 and, Nature then adapting herself to circumstances, will grow the 

 hardest horn." 



I always learned at school that the shoeing of horses arose 

 when the men-at-arms of the middle ages were clad with such 

 heavy armour that they had to be mounted on Flemish mares, 

 These were the most chosen war horses of those days ; immensely 

 powerful of build, but not particularly fast movers, nor of the 

 hardest pattern, I imagine, of bone or horn. 



Haydn, in his Dictionary of Dates, tells us that the shoeing of 

 horses was introduced by the Normans, and this seems, I think, 

 very likely, and under their guidance the shoeing, no doubt, 

 throve. 



Now dropping for the moment all polite fencing of words 

 what is the question before us ? 



A horseshoe has been placed before us, and the suggestion 

 offered that we should accept it as being of Roman manufacture. 



I find no fault with the matter so far, and I desire to bear 

 testimony to the particularly nice and delicate way in which the 

 horseshoe was introduced to us ; but I do object to its pretensions 

 most entirely. 



I exclaim " You are an impostor ; horse-shoeing was only 

 introduced into this country by the Normans, and you wish us to 

 acknowledge you as a veteran ancestor of some six hundred 

 years previously ! " 



I know that I am awakening embers of fire upon my head, and 

 I know well the admirably obstinate character of the ordinary 

 antiquarian. I know that you can only with difficulty convince 

 him that his pre-conceived opinion can be wrong; and I can 

 instance this from my own experience in this case. I heard of 



