88 HORSE AND MAN. 



could hardly believe my eyes. Of course, if time 

 were an imperative object, hot-fitting would be a 

 quicker process ; but where a few minutes are of no 

 particular importance, it must be injurious to the 

 hoof, without ensuring any corresponding advantage. 



I did not like the repeated use of the word ' co- 

 aptation,' just as I always suspect the practical know- 

 ledge of a medical man when he speaks of cephal- 

 algia being a premonitory symptom of incipient 

 rubeola, when he might just as well have said that 

 headache was one of the signs of measles. 



Another point struck me namely, that the ' bed ' 

 obtained by the red-hot shoe would not fit the same 

 shoe when it was cold, owing to the great expan- 

 siveness of iron when heated. Again, though the 

 application of the red-hot shoe would not give pain 

 to the horse at the time, any more than we should 

 suffer pain if the tip of an overgrown finger nail 

 were scorched, yet the horn of the nail would be 

 rendered brittle for some distance beyond the portion 

 that was actually burned away, and the same would 

 be the case with the hoof of the horse. 



Lastly, the reader must have noticed that the 

 writer seems to have had his misgivings about the 

 universal employment of hot-fitting, and carefully 

 limits it to the unmutilated hoof. The italics are 

 his own. 



