142 ON HORSESHOES. 



a well-known and very able antiquarian who had in his possession 

 an old horseshoe, and from whom, possibly, I should get some 

 information. I visited him and was shown the shoe, along with 

 numerous other antiquities. I asked him what date he would 

 assign to it ? He replied, " Oh, two thousand years at least." 

 I somewhat hesitated to accept this, and asked why he thought it 

 quite so old ? His answer was that he had found it with these 

 other articles, in a formation of coral rag ; and he laid before 

 me some excellent examples of the Palaeolithic stone age (though 

 amongst them was one that I certainly thought was rather of the 

 Neolithic). How he imagined that the man armed only with 

 chipped flints could have produced the iron shoe I did not 

 care nor think it worth while to enquire, and I mentally 

 remarked, " He's an antiquarian, he's got this shoe, he has said 

 it is 2,000 years old, and so I feel it has to be up to the time of 

 his decease." 



Nor do I think the very learned Curator of the Dorset County 

 Museum will easily renounce his " Roman horseshoes." 



Saddles were not used or known in England until about the 

 year 600 some 200 and odd years after the Romans had with- 

 drawn and no Roman ever wore the heavy armour of the 

 " man-at-arms," and the Roman was, I like to think, far too 

 practical a man to have so thoroughly impaired that splendid 

 animal, the horse, with shoes, as we more moderns have done. 



No ; I fully hope this paper may give rise to discussion ; and I 

 hope the friends of the " Roman horseshoe " will not spare me 

 in any way. I claim a share of the obstinacy I so readily accord 

 the antiquarian, and I claim the date of the Norman invasion as 

 the eailiestl will allow for horse-shoeing in this country. I hold 

 the shoeing of horses to be the greatest crime man has ever 

 perpetrated against Nature, and I say " Let us lay that crime 

 against the right door." 



