SHOEIXG. 185 



a neat job, and are carved away and weakened. This so 

 called "opening out of the heels" is imaginary expansion, 

 and is a practice which cannot be too strongly condemned. 

 The hoof horn's province is to protect the internal sensitive 

 structures, so the farrier, flying in the face of nature, sets 

 to work and denudes them of it. The horse is made to 

 carry and haul loads for which, perhaps, he was never 

 intended, and is forced to work long continuous hours on 

 all sorts of roads and pavements, the devices of man; so the 

 shoer, with his knife and rasp, inflicts on him an unnatural 

 and tender foot. 



Some farriers argue that the surface expansion of the 

 foot, caused by the weight of horse and rider, is such that 

 the concave sole assumes the form of a plane on its impact 

 with the ground, and go so far as to advocate a horizontal 

 hinge at the toe of the shoe to admit of the necessary ex- 

 pansion. With reference to this old, very general, yet 

 absurd theory. Professor Brown says, "the base of a horse's 

 foot cannot expand, nor the sole descend to any extent 

 without tearing the inside of the hoof from the internal 

 membrane to which it is everywhere closely and securely 

 attached." Dr. Fleming adds the weight of his unquestion- 

 able opinion in these words : " These inflections form what 

 horsemen and horse-shoers term the ' bars,' and this arrange- 

 ment of the wall round the wings of the pedal bone is one 

 of the strongest arguments against the imaginary expansion 

 of the heels ; because, these wings being inelastic, it is evi- 

 dent the wall would be torn from them, or the living tissue 

 between bone and wall would be seriously compressed if 

 the hoof alternately widened and contracted at the heels." 

 That the hoof yields under pressure cannot be gainsaid, but 

 only sufficiently to avoid concussion. The sole does not 

 descend to an appreciable extent. 



