78 PRACTICAL HORSESHOEING. 



• 



raer and anvil are necessary to mould the heated shoe to 

 the requisite shape ; and it is. almost, if not quite, impossi- 

 ble to obtain a perfectly true and solid adaptation of the 

 upper face of the shoe to the horn on which it is to rest, 

 within any reasonable time, unless it be fitted to the hoof 

 in a hot state. 



^Uot and Cold Fitting. — For very many years the two 

 systems of fitting horseshoes in a cold and a heated con- 

 dition to the hoofs have been extensively and severely 

 tested, and the result has been that cold fitting is, as a 

 rule, only resorted to when circumstances prevent the 

 adoption of the other method, or when the owner of a 

 horse, imagining that the hot shoe injures the foot, incurs 

 the risks attending a bad fit to guard against his imagi- 

 nary evil. 



It is needless, in a brief essay like the present, to enter 

 into a relation of the observations and experiments which 

 have established the undoubted and great superiority of 

 what is termed " hot " to " cold " fitting. These will be 

 found noticed at some length in a work recently published 

 by me, entitled " Horseshoes and Horseshoeing." It may 

 be sufficient to state that the evils supposed to result from 

 fitting the shoes hot to the hoofs are purely chimerical. 

 It is true, when the sole is excessively mutilated, should 

 the farrier keep the heated shoe too long in contact with 

 it, injury would doubtless follow, but this accident is so 

 exceedingly rare as to be scarcely ever known, even in 

 forges where shoeing is performed in the most objection- 

 able manner. The ill effects imagined to arise from hot 

 shoeing can easily be traced to the operation of other 

 causes, not the least of which is the fashion of paring the 

 lower face of the foot. 



The chief objections to cold shoeing are the want of 

 solidity, the foot being made to fit the shoe, and* the pro- 

 cess being more difficult and expensive. 



