ART OF SHOEING. 547 



sustains the greatest exertion of any, and forms the fulcrum 

 in all exertion. The continental shoers do this well by using 

 an instrument which the French call the ' rogne-pied,' with 

 which the outer hard edge of the wall is chipped off, when 

 the buttress does the rest, by paring a broad well-adapted 

 surface for the shoe to be adjusted to. 



The 'rogne pied,' or toeing-knife as it was called by 

 English farriers, was formerly in common use with the 

 buttress, by our workmen. Its application, however, was fre- 

 quently carried to excess, the substance of the hoof being 

 thereby too much reduced; excesses in the same way are 

 not unfrequently committed by the less instructed of con- 

 tinental workmen. The intelligent understanding of the 

 shoer can alone afford sufficient guarantee against abuse, 

 whatever be the instruments used or the rules prescribed. 



The opposite to the system we are advocating viz., of cut- 

 ting and rasping the hoof flat and hollow across the centre, 

 which is followed by the shoe being made in the same form 

 exposes the coffin bone to be jammed on to the shoe, the point 

 of which being fixed by means of nails, the quarters of the 

 foot form the fulcra on which pressure acts, as the two 

 parallel halves of the shoe posteriorly become two arms of a 

 lever thus we find the coffin bones pressed into deformity, 

 as will be shown when treating on diseases of the foot. 



Besides the conflicting notions entertained as to the way 

 horses' feet should be prepared for shoeing, viz. how a foot 

 with exuberance of horn is to be reduced to form, or in what 

 this latter consists the now long-established customs render 

 agreement on method difficult, and necessarily a system will 

 be slow of being brought about ; the instruments alone now 

 used by us are ill adapted for the work ; the drawing-knife 

 and rasp are apt to rob the feet of their strength and sub- 

 stance, the one by scooping out the concavities, and the other 



