522 ART OF SHOEING. 



nation in which the art was first applied, and equally so 

 as to the quarter of the globe in which the ingenuity of 

 man was brought to bear on the subject. 



Nor is the negative side of the question more instructive ; 

 local accounts must not be taken as full evidence, such as the 

 absence of any account of shoeing horses in the army which 

 Xenophon commanded, or the non-appearance of shoes on 

 the equestrian works of the early sculptors, because the same 

 countries whence these accounts come, admit of horses being 

 used to a great extent at the present day without shoes ; 

 therefore, the history of horse-shoeing, as far as it can be 

 made instructive to the many, lies near to our own time; 

 from the latter end of the sixteenth century to the present 

 period may be. found^all that is necessary to show the state of 

 the art, at the epoch referred to, when Solleysell wrote, 

 proving himself by his work to have been the first and most 

 able of all modern authorities on the subject. The art was, 

 no doubt, well advanced at that time in Spain and Italy, 

 and we believe is referable to a much higher antiquity in 

 the old world, about which we have no early accounts, and 

 yet, looking at the methods of horse-shoeing adopted now 

 amongst eastern nations where no European has had any 

 part in effecting change, evidence is afforded of an innate in- 

 telligence. 



In all the specimens of shoeing that we have seen, from the 

 remotest countries from which travellers have brought them, 

 however rude the workmanship, a clear intelligence is 

 evinced in adapting means to the requirement. 



This subject embraces a wider field for combined labours 

 than may be apparent under its title; to approach profi- 

 ciency, a clear understanding of the locomotive functions 

 of the horse is required, and if that be acknowledged, the 

 necessary steps must be taken, by going back to the ele- 



