AET OF SHOEING. 5C5 



the English army and its length of service on the Continent 

 at the beginning of this century ; the same with reference to 

 the Austrian army in Italy, where we have witnessed the 

 clumsy ill-adapted shoes used on their horses at Milan, 

 Florence, and Naples, the smooth pavement of which cities 

 requires some special provision in the art, instead of which the 

 same customs are adopted there as for horses on the Tyrol 

 and other mountainous districts where snow and ice are com- 

 mon during many months of the year. In truth, horse- 

 shoeing, as regards its importance, soundness, or the reverse of 

 any system in vogue, escapes the attention the subject merits. 

 Eeturning to the Oriental shoe, the plan has all the 

 characteristic appearance of an extemporised method for 

 protecting the horse's hoof from wear, prompted by innate 

 wisdom, in adapting means conformably to the economy 

 of the horse's foot, and the surface of ground on which he 

 moves. Still, from trials which we made of that ancient and 

 extensively adopted mode of shoeing many years ago, they 

 did not in the end persuade us that it could be advanta- 

 geously applied in Europe. It is true, that these trials were 

 mostly confined, in application, to lame horses, and that 

 at a time when our notions on the functions of the foot, 

 and the effects of shoeing, were very different from what 

 they are now. 



It was not until recently that I could thoroughly under- 

 stand how the Oriental system of shoeing is adapted to the 

 regions over which it is exclusively in use ; and I am con- 

 vinced that no method in vogue in Europe could effectually 

 supply the place of the shoe, so admirably suited to the 

 sandy desert. The shoe from which the illustration (fig. 233) 

 's taken, was presented to me about twenty years ago by an 

 English nobleman who brought it from Egypt. After all 

 that one has heard about the African and Arab shoe, and its 



