NEW BROOMS. 95 



bringing the frog to the ground was a favourite one some 

 forty years ago. Professor Coleman roundly asserted 

 that the frog must have pressure or be diseased. He 

 invented several sorts of shoes, with the intention of 

 causing the frog to touch something, and obtained 

 patents for them. The one which appears to have had 

 the best trial was the thin heeled shoe. This, being 

 thickest at the toe, brought the frog on to the ground. 

 It also set the weight of the horse on the heel, and 

 strained no end of back sinews. So it passed away. 

 About the same time jointed shoes for the prevention of 

 contraction were tried, and left off, as the stress of 

 the nails on the hoof was too great. Other systems from 

 time to time have cropped up, and returned to their 

 native obscurity. Meanwhile our horses have gone on, 

 some well, some ill, and some indifferently. Horses with 

 sound feet shod on our present plan have remained 

 sound to the last day of their lives ; those with diseased 

 feet have been screwed up ; and so I imagine it will be 

 to the end of the chapter. 



However, the shoes may be improved. That a shoe can 

 lame a horse when it does not suit him, or when it is 

 unskilfully put on, no one will be found to deny ; but 

 the number of horses so lamed is something infinitesimally 

 small. Hot stables, bad stable management, injudicious 

 food, and the pace, lame most horses who are lame in the 

 feet. Cart horses are, it is true, very subject to side 

 bones and ring bone, and this I attribute in a great 

 measure to the manner in which they are shod with high 

 calkins ; but they are also seldom much attended to as 

 regards their general health, and so are more liable to 

 disease in the feet than they need be. 



If our present system of shoeing light horses were so 



