94 HORSES AND ROADS. 



it must grow out, and be replaced by horn of an 

 opposite character, and this is the way it is done. 

 The disease may again be produced by the same 

 course of action that first brought it on. When 

 this is resumed, and the horse again begins to suffer, 

 they say that he has never been cured. 



Mayhew says : ' Nothing can be practical if there 

 be wanting the desire to embody particular direc- 

 tions.' It is found that nearly every one who tries 

 this course of treatment is inclined to have his 

 horse exercised either in a field or on the grassy 

 sides of the roads, instead of on the hard. This is a 

 mistaken theory. On the grass the hoof receives 

 too little friction or attrition. Mr. Douglas says : 

 4 From the moment a horse is foaled, we either keep 

 him in grass fields soft to tread upon, or in warm 

 stables standing upon soft straw, and then we are 

 surprised that his hoofs should become dry and 

 brittle, instead of keeping moist, tough, and hard. 

 In the Orkneys, in the mountains of Wales, the 

 wilds of Exmoor and Dartmoor, many parts of the 

 continent of Europe, and in a considerable portion 

 of the rest of the globe, horses run about over rocks, 

 through ravines, and up precipitous ridges, unshod ; 

 yet all this is done without difficulty, and to the 

 evident advantage of their hoofs, for these animals 

 never suffer from contracted feet, or from corns, 

 sandcracks, &c., until they become civilised and have 

 been shod.' Another writer, a Devonian, says : * Dart- 

 moor is not a great wild flat, as many suppose ; but, 

 on the contrary, it is for the most part a continual 



