33G TI1E MODERN HOKSE DOCTOK. 



heeled shoe, from congestion and deep-seated disease within the 

 hoof. In short, any sort of work, management, or system of 

 shoeing, that tends to dry up the natural moisture of the foot, 

 may be considered a direct cause of contraction. Predisposing 

 causes may also exist in breed. It is well known that some 

 animals are foaled marked with the parent's deformity — con- 

 tracted quarters, for instance ; and such are, more especially 

 than others, liable to quarter crack. This affords a reason why 

 horses, not predisposed, escape the evils alluded to, and others 

 not enumerated; as in, for instance, a dry, sandy country, on 

 shipboard, or in hot stables with dry floors. 



Mr. Percivall says, that " greater attention to shoeing and in- 

 creased care about the condition of the hoof itself have, no doubt, 

 had very beneficial effects in the prevention both of contraction 

 and quarter crack." The same author thus alludes to the causes 

 of toe crack, or toe sand crack, as English surgeons term it. 

 " Toe sand cracks are caused by violence. Shoeing, also, may 

 have something to do in its production. The horses, which are 

 the subjects of it, are those which are employed in laborious or 

 straining draughts. The toe of the hind foot is the grand ful- 

 crum through which the hind limbs, the propellers of the body, 

 exert their power ; and it is in some violent and forcible effort 

 that the hind hoof, strained as it is to its uttermost, and particu- 

 larly at the toe, splits, commonly first at the coronet ; the same 

 as in the fore foot, where the horn, but newly formed, is thin and 

 unresisting ; the crack subsequently extending gradually down 

 the wall, even as far as the point of the toe. 



*< Digging the point of the toe into the ground, or stamping it 

 hard down upon the pavement, (and especially when this stress 

 upon the fore part of the wall is at all times promoted by high 

 calkins to the shoe,) must certainly, one would think, be the 

 main producer of toe sand crack — an opinion still further fa- 

 vored by the observation which has been made of shaft horses in 

 dray?, being more subject to the accident than trace horses. 

 Still, however, for all this, it behooves me to say, that with the 

 best judges of such matters, the point is one not yet free from 

 doubt and difference of thinking. Short and upright pasterns, 

 with clubby prominent hoofs, indicate a predisposition to toe 



