AET OF SHOEING. 569 



of the hoof, and from the fact that our neighbours on the 

 Continent never fullered their shoes, but stamped them, 

 and as they were noted for the smallness in the number of 

 their lame horses, as compared with ourselves, the inci- 

 dental part of stamping was caught up by Coleman, hence 

 the origin of the stamped shoe since then in vogue in 

 England. 



Originality, to be practically useful, must result from cor- 

 rect premises, whereas Coleman erred in attributing too much 

 of the fault of shoeing to fine fullering, which admitted of ready 

 correction, without giving up a custom not in the abstract 

 bad, before a better could be established ; and in alleging the 

 chief merit of French shoeing to coarse stamping, these errors 

 led the professor, destitute from first to last as he was of 

 knowledge of kind or degree, to fit him for the work re- 

 quired, to extemporise his coarsely stamped shoe and the 

 wedge-formed nail. 



Coleman not having crossed that narrow strait of sea 

 which separates England from France, never saw his mis- 

 take in attributing coarseness to the stamping of the shoes, 

 such as are made in the good forges of Paris and Lyons; it 

 could have been easily seen, that from the open space which 

 the four-sided stamp gave, the small punch clearing a passage 

 in the centre of the dye for the nail, a command was 

 given to the workman to pitch his nail in a direct line 

 to where he intended it to pass through the wall and make 

 its exit. 



The advantage in this form of nail hole over any other, 

 consists in the facility for driving the nail high or low, 

 taking little or much hold according to requirement; thus 

 the French shoes are stamped with admirable system, the 

 inside nail-holes having a fine, and the outer a coarser posi- 

 tion, and with the advantages alluded to, which the shape of 



