ART OF SHOEING. 521 



sion, act by instinct ; the bee of to-day following the same 

 laws as those of his species in all preceding generations. 



The history of any subject which extends back for ages, 

 is always difficult to unravel, and when sought to be gone 

 into, is usually lost in remote obscurity; such is pre-emi- 

 nently the case with the history of horse-shoeing. 



The late Mr Bracy Clark applied his classical learning, and 

 great love for the subject, with much earnestness, and after 

 all his researches, believed that horse-shoeing had been in 

 vogue for twelve or thirteen hundred years, and on the 

 credit of some traditional accounts, speaks of its having been 

 brought into Britain with William the Conqueror. . 



It appears to us that we are totally unable to fix on any 

 date, even approximately, on the origin of shoeing. We 

 have no account whatever of the beginning; unlike the case 

 of the art of printing, we find no name attached as that of 

 the original inventor; and though we are instituting inquiries 

 into an appliance which has enabled man to avail himself of 

 the horse, as a means of advancing civilization, beyond any 

 other power which he could control; and when, in recent times, 

 other powers are made to supply those of the horse to a 

 great extent, that animal is brought into even increased 

 requirement, and, like man himself, does much labour which 

 only living locomotive powers can effectually perform. Not- 

 withstanding all these reasons, there is no epoch to which 

 any two authorities have agreed to assign as that to which 

 the art in question begins to take its date. 



We say, then, with Berenger, in his investigations into 

 the history of the horse and horsemanship, that the very 

 absence of any recorded incident whereby a date can be 

 fixed on, is proof of a high antiquity; and, in truth, it must 

 be confessed, that we have no account whatever of the origin 

 of horse-shoeing, but are in total ignorance even of the 



