82 HOESES AND ROADS. 



mankind could afford to endure all evils before it 

 could afford to question the perfectibility of mortal 

 invention. There is no accounting for incongruities 

 when men, deserting reason, consent to adopt routine 

 as a guide. Veterinary surgeons attribute to shoe- 

 ing all the evils with which the hoof is affected. 

 Veterinary surgeons are somewhat slow in adopting 

 new ideas ; but seem, with the firmness and tenacity 

 ignorance displays towards a favourite superstition, 

 to love and cling to the practices in which they have 

 been educated.' Some people cling to the supersti- 

 tion that nailing a horseshoe on the door keeps out 

 the witches. The shoe does, certainly, less harm on 

 the door than on the horse's foot ; but to nail it on 

 the latter is a superstition utterly unworthy of the 

 civilisation and intelligence of the English nation 

 in the nineteenth century. Future historians will 

 place upon record that an appeal had to be made 

 to us, in the year of grace 1880, to abandon the 

 use of artificial foundations tacked on to a living 

 creation of God ; and these historians will not fail 

 to throw further shame on us by pointing out the 

 fact that semi-civilised nations, with whose customs 

 we were conversant, were able to work the horse 

 harder than we did without any protection to his 

 feet. 



In the retreat of the French army from Moscow, 

 the horses lost all their shoes before they reached 

 the Vistula. Yet they found their way to France 

 over rough, hard, frozen ground. 



