THE HUNTER AT HOME. 165 



ones alternately contract and expand, sometimes pinching 

 the horse's leg, and then again becoming so loose as to 

 admit no end of mud and chafe the skin j whilst leather 

 ones become as hard as boards ; and the best, the cloth 

 faced with leather, do this a little, and also allow much 

 more mud to get to the skin under the boot than bandages 

 do. The latter properly put on and tied will never shift 

 or come off, but if the groom mistrusts his ability in 

 adjusting them, he had better put a few stitches and sew 

 them on. Speedy cutting is a vile trick. Some horses 

 do it when they are over-fresh, from wildly flourishing 

 their legs about, others when they are tired, while some 

 treasures are to be found who always do it. Proper 

 shoeing may modify this fault, but a horse who speedy- 

 cuts in his gallop is never safe without a boot. A stiff 

 leather boot will protect the injured part, but the better 

 plan is to put a common india-rubber ring boot on to the 

 offending foot, between the fetlock and the coronet ; this 

 will fend off the blow, and is in every way preferable to 

 a high boot, which must needs possess the disadvantages 

 enumerated above. 



As to cutting behind, I must have another turn at 

 what my readers probably consider a "cuckoo cry/' 

 viz., the Charlier shoe. But facts are stubborn things, 

 and since I have used this shoe behind, three different 

 horses of mine have at different times ceased to brush, 

 who did it before they were so shod.* Other ways of 

 preventing this disagreeable action there are. To put a 

 three-quarter shoe on behind is generally efficacious ; if 

 cutting off the inside quarter does not cure the evil, try 

 cutting off the outside, and that will in almost all cases 

 effect a cure, but of course the foot is on one side, which 

 * And since I wrote this sentence I have cured four more. 



