122 The Management and Treatment of the Horse, 



numbers of horses' legs and feet are worn out before the 

 animals have arived at a mature age, and it has almost 

 become a proverb that one horse could wear out three 

 sets of legs. This is a very unsatisfactory state of things, 

 the more so as nine-tenths of the diseases of the foot of 

 the horse are the result of bad management in youth, 

 and ignorance and neglect in after-life. Nor is this to be 

 wondered at when we consider who our shoeing-smiths 

 are, and the qualifications that are considered necessary 

 for a man to shoe a horse. I do not think that I shall ex- 

 ceed the truth when I say, that hundreds of men are 

 working in large shops as shoeing-smiths, who know 

 nothing about the structure of the horse's foot. When 

 we look to the rotten system in our army of making 

 shoeing-smiths of tailors, plasterers, and bricklayers, 

 labourers, is it any wonder that our shops are overrun 

 with the so-called " shoeing-smith ? " Mr. Douglas says, 

 "In my own regiment (the 10th Hussars), just before 

 they went to India, out of fifteen farrier-sergeants and 

 shoeing-smiths, there were only the farrier-major and 

 two others who had been farriers before they joined the 

 army. One of the twelve had been a tailor, and as such 

 had worked in the regime at, a second had been a collier, 

 a third a haberdasher, the fourth a groom, and the re- 

 mainder clodhoppers." The writer is able to prove that 

 the 10th Hussars is not the only regiment in the same 

 fix ; indeed, the Scots Greys and the Household Brigade 

 a few years ago were in equally as bad a state. Y et 

 these are the men who are held up to our eyes as pattern 

 smiths. Go into the large shoeing establishments in 

 London, Manchester, Nottingham, &c., and enquire of 



