INCONVENIENCE OF < COGS ' FOR 'ROUGHING.' 87 



least expected. Even the Charlier shoe, although it 

 will not pick up snow (the facility for doing which 

 is increased by lifting the foot higher from the 

 ground, when cogs and calks are used), is not per- 

 fect upon glassy streets. We have seen that Mr. 

 Bowditch condemned the use of both toe and heel 

 calks, as a general rule ; yet when he rode his mare 

 upon a frozen lake he turned down 'a small toe- 

 calk.' He had no calk behind because the heels were 

 bare, and so there was no danger of slipping on 

 their part ; neither would there be any reason to fear 

 that the bare toe would act otherwise. 



The writer has seen a valuable light horse, 

 nearly thoroughbred, have on a full set of shoes, 

 in which eight nails, nearly three-sixteenths of an 

 inch in thickness, were driven four in each quarter, 

 and in a space of three inches for each four nails. 

 What an immense amount of laceration and com- 

 pression the delicate hollow fibres of the crust must 

 have suffered by thus wedging them up within a 

 fourth of their natural dimensions ! Besides this, 

 the hoof was carved out on the crust to receive 

 three clips, one on the toe and one on each quarter. 

 A calk, three-quarters of an inch high, was put on 

 one heel of each hind shoe, and, on the other heel, 

 a screw cog of equal height. On each front shoe 

 a cog, also three-quarters of an inch high, was 

 put upon each heel. This wretched victim to 

 fashion was then regarded with the utmost satis- 

 faction by the farriers, and his groom ; and all this 

 heathenism was perpetrated in the forge of a 



