162 HORSES AND ROADS. 



unconscious precursor of the non-shoeing system ; 

 and this at a late date. The snow would have ' balled ' 

 in the hoofs of iron-shod horses, and the eight 

 degrees of frost would have rendered the ground too 

 hard for them to alight upon it after each leap. 

 Gruttapercha staved off these difficulties, but the 

 naked hoof would have done better still if it had 

 had a month's judicious care previously bestowed 

 upon it ; and for many obvious reasons, one of which 

 is that guttapercha applied over the whole sole 

 would obstruct natural transpiration, and so cause 

 an unhealthy state of the whole hoof, if its applica- 

 tion were kept up continually. 



All these ideas lead up to the main point, which 

 is that the freer the hoof is from iron the better it 

 does. 



Should anyone doubt that transpiration is con- 

 tinually going on in the foot of a horse, let him put 

 an unshod one to stand for five minutes on dry flag- 

 stones, and then he will see the imprint of each 

 foot marked in damp upon them; or, as Mayhew 

 puts it, let him hold a wineglass with its mouth 

 reversed upon the sole, and then he will find that 

 the inside of the glass becomes shortly covered with 

 dew. This frightens the grooms into the belief that 

 it is an unnatural phenomenon, because it cannot 

 be seen in a shod horse. The current of air which 

 the raising up of the foot by the shoe admits under- 

 neath the foot carries off the vapour, and so does 

 not permit of its condensation upon a dry floor. 

 This forbids the constant employment of gutta- 



