96 The Management and Treatment of the Horse, 



of the shoeing smith, the groom, and the master, the 

 wonder is, not that we have many lame horses, but 

 that we have any sound ones. How many smiths are 

 there who will boast that they can drive a nail its full 

 length up the delicate hoof of the foot as they say 

 without injuring the foot. Many, again, will use eight, 

 and I have seen some horses with nine nails to hold 

 one shoe, and then after doing all they can to destroy 

 the foot they grumble and call the horse a brittle- 

 footed brute, and tell us the horse has not a bit of foot 

 to nail to. They do not think, and they do not like 

 to be told, that it is their ignorance of the structure 

 of the hoof that has been the cause of all the mischief. 

 The fact is the nails they drive cut the fibres with 

 which the hoof is composed, and as these fibres are cut 

 so they become dead horn, all the nutritious mucus being 

 cut off that supplies life and elasticity to the hoof 

 no life really existing from the part they have in- 

 jured up at the clenches to the line of demarcation 

 at the sole. It is not only the fibres that are cut that 

 receive injury, but in driving the nails the fibres are 

 driven out of their natural course sideways, and the 

 hoof between the nails is compressed together as if 

 in a vice, preventing the pores of the hoof Irom per- 

 forming their proper functions, hence the folly of 

 shoeing-smiths driving so many nails into the foot. A 

 well-fitted and well-made shoe will keep on the horse 

 better with six nails than a bad one will with ten, yet 

 we find many smiths are perfectly contented to nail 

 on the horse a piece of iron bent round with rough 

 nail holes punched in and call it a shoe ; this we find 



