88 HORSES AND ROADS. 



veterinary surgeon. But, perhaps, he was shoeing to 

 order. 



It has been well said that ' ladies are not bigger 

 slaves to fashion than are modern horse owners.' 



In a paper dedicated to agriculturists it has 

 been maintained that horseshoes are an absolute 

 necessity, but that 'the difficulty in riding or driving 

 through the London streets arises from the variety 

 of pavements in use. From Westminster to the 

 Bank, horses have to travel over macadam, asphalte, 

 wood, and granite. The shoe adapted for traffic on 

 one kind of pavement ill suits another.' But is 

 it so ? Ask Mr. Smither. c If we had a uniform 

 kind of pavement, a shoe for universal (?) use 

 would be quickly invented. The ingenuity of man 

 would devise horseshoes to travel over glass, were 

 glass the only pavement in use.' This is an insult 

 to the common sense of its readers. It has been 

 widely, and for a long time, proved that the naked 

 foot of the horse is as much at home on one kind of 

 hard road as on another, and can pass over all of 

 them alternately without wearing out, or incon- 

 veniencing the horse, and that on none of them will 

 he slip, or on wet grass either. 



In Mexico, Yucatan, Honduras (both British and 

 Spanish), Guatemala, San Salvador, Nicaragua, 

 Costa Eica, the United States of Colombia, Vene- 

 zuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil, horses, 

 mules, and donkeys are worked over every descrip- 

 tion of hard roads, most of them exceedingly rough, 

 carrying very heavy packs from the back country 



