282 THE PERFECT HOKSE. 



fitting the shoe clearly stated, I will make the following 

 selection from the same author we have just quoted, 

 who is an earnest advocate of it, and who has stated its 

 advantages more clearly than any other writer : — 



''^Hot and Gold Fitting. — For very many years, the two 

 systems of fitting horseshoes — in a cold and a heated 

 condition — to the hoofs have been extensively and se- 

 verely tested; and the result has been, that cold fitting 

 is, as a rule, only resorted to when circumstances prevent 

 the adoption of the other method, or when the owner 

 of a horse, imagining that the hot shoe injures the foot, 

 incurs the risks attending a bad fit to guard against his 

 imaginary evil. 



*'It is needless, in a brief essay like the present, to 

 enter into a relation of the observations and experi- 

 ments which have established the undoubted and great 

 superiority of what is termed ' hot ' to ' cold ' fitting. 

 These will be found noticed at some length in a work 

 recently published by me, entitled ' Horseshoes and 

 Horseshoeing.' It may be sufficient to state that the 

 evils supposed to result from fitting the shoes hot to the 

 hoofs are purely chimerical. It is true, when the sole is 

 excessively mutilated, should the farrier keep the heated 

 shoe too long in contact with it, injury would doubtless 

 follow; but this accident is so exceedingly rare as to be 

 scarcely ever known, even in forges where shoeing is 

 performed in the most objectionable manner. The ill 

 effects imagined to arise from hot shoeing can easily be 

 traced to the operation of other causes, not the least of 



