248 THE PERFECT HORSE. 



horse's foot, and how to treat it. Men have stolen from 

 him right and left. His works have been the great 

 thesaurus from which literary thieves have filched their 

 boasted opinions. Even his errors they have adopted, 

 and given him no credit for them ! Principles which 

 he discovered, believed in, published, and afterwards 

 disproved and threw overboard, they have taken, put 

 into a metallic shape, patented, and advertised them to 

 the world as new discoveries. At the feet of this wise 

 teacher I sit gladly as a pupil ; and I feel that I can do 

 no greater service to the horsemen of America than 

 to introduce into these pages certain portions of his 

 works. At one point, he is speaking of the errors em- 

 bodied in the then system of shoeing ; and his words 

 are applicable unto us of this day. I cannot do better 

 than to transcribe numerically some of the points he 

 makes. He says, — 



"1. Long shoes, thick at the heels, never remain 

 firmly attached to the feet in consequence of their 

 weight, and break the clinches of the nails. 



*' 2. They require proportionately large nails to re- 

 tain them ; and these split the horn ; or, frequently, their 

 thick stalks press against the sensitive laminae and sole, 

 and cause the horse to go lame. 



"3. Horses are liable to pull oif these long shoes 

 when the hind-foot treads upon the heel of the fore- 

 shoe, either in walking, while standing, by putting the 

 one foot upon the other, between two paving-stones in 

 the pavement, between the bars of gates, in the draw- 

 bridges of fortifications, or in heavy ground. 



