CONTRACTION. 459 



traded foot. But when both feet are contracted, and both con- 

 sequently alike in aspect, and the same in action, it may 

 assist our judgment to revert in our mind to what sort of foot 

 such a description of horse ought by nature to possess ; though, 

 even in this case, without any reference to what the feet ought 

 by nature to be, we may, by close and critical examination, 

 detect the anormal changes in them. Combined with a nar- 

 rowing from side to side, there will be visible straightness of 

 the quarters of the hoof, with a turning-in, more or less sud- 

 den and angular, of its heels, which glide or shelve forward, 

 inward and downward, so as to vanish from our sight — as the 

 horse stands before us — before they reach down to the heels 

 of the shoe ; which are made so much too wide that the heels of 

 the hoof rest upon the inner edges of the shoe ; so that when the 

 foot is held up, and we behold nothing but its ground-surface, the 

 false width of the heels of the shoe delude us into a notion that 

 the foot is a broad enough one, when in reality it is in a high 

 degree contracted. This is a deception to which the smith — 

 probably at the instigation of the dealer — contributes by, in his 

 own language, '* opening the heels" of the hoof: an operation 

 consisting in cutting away the bars, thereby throwing the chan- 

 nels of the commissures into the general concavity of the sole^ 

 and so making the latter appear ample and extended ; while the 

 heels, from having their points at the same time obtruncated by 

 the drawing-knife, have the false look of being considerably 

 widened. 



A young examiner of horses should be particular in guarding 

 against delusion like this ; and he will find it best exposed 

 if he take up his position behind the horse, so as to direct his 

 view upon the posterior parts of the fore feet from between the 

 hind legs. This will enable him to judge of the high or low 

 condition of the quarters of the fore hoofs, as well as to descry the 

 unoccupied spaces left upon the heels of the shoe, from the 

 unnatural curving-in of the heels of the foot : such insidious 

 curving-in of the latter, one or both, being always a strong indi- 

 cation of contraction. 



Predisposition to Contraction lurks in breed or kind of 



