HORSE-SHOEING. 103 



on each side, have become a portion of the outer rim 

 of the shoe ; whereby the outer rim is lengthened, 

 and the inner rim shortened ; and there are no cor- 

 ners left to prevent your fitting the shoe to the exact 

 sweep of the crust at the heels, and you are enabled 

 to keep the web as wide at the heels as it is at the 

 toe. Fig. 3 has been introduced in this place, be- 

 cause it affords the opportunity of explaining the 

 reason for cutting off the heels as directed ; but at 

 this stage of the business it is a good plan always to 

 leave the quarters and heels rather straight, and wide 

 apart, until you liave fitted the toe ; because it is less 

 trouble to bring them in, than it is to open tliem out, 

 after the front has been fitted. 



TTie Nail Holes. 



You must next open the nail-holes ; but be sure 

 that they have been stamped so as to pass straight 

 through the shoe, and come out in the flat part of 

 the web, and not partly in the flat and partly in the 

 seating. It is a very bad plan to make them slant 

 inward as most smiths do; for in driving a nail 

 they have first to pitch the. point inward, then turn 

 it outward, driving it all the time with the grain of 

 the crust, and at last they bring it out high up in the 

 thinnest part of the hoof, and have the weakest part 

 of the nail for a clinch, l^ow, instead of all this, if 

 you make tlie holes straight through the shoe, you 



