70 HORSE AND MAN. 



King Theodore of Abyssinia. He was shown in a 

 menagerie, and after I had inspected his hoofs care- 

 fully, I remarked to the exhibitor that I presumed 

 him to be kept for show and not for use. But the 

 proprietor assured me that he took his share of the 

 work with the other horses, and that when travelling 

 from one place to another he was regularly harnessed 

 to the vans or carts. 



Farriers and grooms are, as a rule, impressed 

 with an idea that because the frog is soft, it will be 

 hurt by coming upon a hard road. So, with the 

 very best intentions, they cut it off either partially 

 or entirely. 



There is now before me an entire frog which was 

 cut off at a single stroke of the farrier's knife. It 

 was taken from the floor of a forge by General 

 Carter, a well-known lover of horses. It seems 

 strange that such an idea should prevail in these 

 ' cycling ' days, when indiartibber tires have been 

 practically found not only to be more pleasant for the 

 rider than the old steel-faced tires, but experience 

 has proved that the soft elastic indiarubber tire is 

 far more lasting than one which is made of steel. 



Suppose that we revert to the parallel of the 

 horse's hoof and the railway carriage spring. In 

 the accompanying illustration, fig. 1 represents the 

 spring, which is made of a number of flat strips of 



