176 SHOEING. 



The cutting oi horses is in general attri- 

 buted to some impropriety in the mode of 

 forming or settini>* the shoe ; though this is by- 

 no means to be considered the invariable cause, 

 for such inconvenience is sometimes produced 

 by very different means. Horses, for instance, 

 frequently injure themselves when in too long 

 and repeated journeys they become leg tveary^ 

 and though of great spirit and bottom, com- 

 pulsively submit to the power of exhausted 

 nature ; when hardly able to get one foot be- 

 fore the other, it can create no surprize that 

 they feel it impossible to proceed in equal di- 

 rection, but move their limbs in the most ir- 

 regular manner, warping and twisting^ as if 

 their falling must prove inevitable at every 

 successive motion. In such state of bodily 

 debilitation, injuries of this kind are un- 

 doubtedly sustained, and too often by the in- 

 advertency or inexperience of the rider or 

 driver, supposed- to arise from some i4iiper- 

 fection in the operation of shoeing, which in 

 this instance is no way coiicerned. 



It is not so in others, where the shoe be- 

 ing formed too wide for the hoof, or with a 

 projecting sweep at the heely (particularly in 



