AKT OF SHOEING. 551 



nail consists in the variously formed head. The shoes and 

 nails constitute the manufactured material which the artist 

 shoer uses up, and these may be made by expert hands, not 

 necessarily shoers at all; though the workmen fill up their 

 time, when not applying shoes, in making them, still if we 

 could get them equally well made by machinery, it would be 

 a gain in the whole process. 



Throughout Great Britain we use two kinds of horse-nails, 

 the old rose-headed pattern, and what is commonly called 

 the countersink; this last kind of nail is of modern intro- 

 duction, brought into vogue with new ideas on shoeing 

 about sixty or seventy years ago; this nail is entirely con- 

 fined to the English school ; in the whole of Europe, apart 

 from the British Isles, nails of totally different form are used, 

 as we shall hereafter explain, and also by the older Oriental 

 nations. 



Writers on the art of farriery have not duly estimated and 

 described how differently formed nails necessarily affect the 

 whole process, and call for modification in the forging of 

 shoes. Those of the old schools are made by the iron being 

 hammered out so that the web presents an almost uniform 

 thickness, which is not more than half that of the outer 

 margin of an English shoe;, and they stamp this web of iron 

 with a tool that makes a shallow depression for the nail 

 head. With slight difference, this mode is pursued over the 

 old world, where the art of shoeing no doubt was first applied. 



And the practice of shoeing, as carried on by any of the 

 continental nations, will serve to illustrate the views we 

 wish to expose, though the French method, which, above all, 

 merits the name of a well-founded system, as adopted through- 

 out that country, and to a great extent imitated over the 

 world, is that which we shall take most account of, next to 

 the modes in use in our own country. 



