90 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



Equal mechanical skill lias been exerted in an- 

 other direction. Many horses cannot be driven at 

 anything like their highest speed without danger 

 of cutting themselves, by striking one foot or leg 

 against another, especially when they " break " ; and 

 to protect them from injury in this manner a great 

 variety of " boots" have been invented. Counting dif- 

 ferent sizes of these articles separately, the number 

 of them now on sale is over two hundred. Very few 

 trotters are able to dispense with boots entirely, and 

 many of them could not be used as race horses at all 

 except for these appliances. The shoeing of trotting 

 horses, again, is an art in itself, 1 and so is the use of 

 toe-weights, which are small pieces of brass screwed 

 or otherwise attached to the hoofs of the fore feet. 

 Heavy shoes and toe-weights are employed to make 

 horses trot who otherwise would pace, to keep them 

 level in their gait, and sometimes to cause a length- 

 ening of their stride. The difficulty and importance 

 of these matters may be gathered from the fact that 

 a change of no more than two ounces in a trotter's 

 fore shoes or toe-weights would, in many cases, make 

 a difference of several seconds in his speed for a 

 mile, and consequently of thousands of dollars in his 

 value as a race horse. The necessity for toe-weights 

 or heavy shoes lies in some defect of conformation 

 or of gait, and when a trotter is obliged to carry a 

 heavy load in this manner his feet and legs suffer. 



1 A fast horse now on the track is shod as follows : a sixteen- 

 onnce shoe on the off fore foot, and a fourteen and a half ounce 

 shoe on the near one ; a shoe of eight ounces on the off hind foot, 

 and one of six ounces on the near hind foot. Jack, to take another 

 instance, wore only light tips on his fore feet Avhen he made his 

 record of 2.12^. 



