THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 81 



attached to the excuse of a lost shoe. However well 

 prepared you may be to brave and scorn the doubts 

 which will arise, and the surmises which will be made, 

 as to the cause of being thrown out, whenever a case of 

 " non est inventus " is made out against you, the loss 

 of a shoe is, of itself, a most mortifying occurrence to any 

 man unprovided with a second horse. In a soft grass 

 country you may not be brought to an anchor, especially 

 if you are minus only a hind-shoe, but in a plough 

 country, varied with flints, and intersected by lanes, to 

 be told by some kind friend in your rear (and some fel- 

 lows seem to have eyes made for these discoveries), that 

 your fore-shoe is gone, must cause your heart to sink 

 within you, — it is the next bad hearing to "a terrible 

 over-reach ;" it carries with it your sentence of excom- 

 munication, and renders you hors dii combat till you can 

 be clumsily refitted at the nearest smithy. 



It is a common practice to carry a spare shoe and 

 nails ; and a jointed shoe which may, on a pinch, be fitted 

 to any horse's foot, is as much a part of the appendages 

 to the saddles of the hunts-peopJey as a horn-case or 

 couples ; but not more than one in ten, if half as many, of 

 the field have this advantage, which, after all, will not 

 save you the delay of finding a blacksmith, and of an 

 operation always too delicate to be hurried. 



Prevention is better than remedy. You must take 

 care that your horses are so shod, that the loss of a 



M 



