» XATUUK KNOWS .I3E«T. io 



on <i Hint road, it does not urow fast enough to supply the 

 material that, is there raj)idly worn away. In the one ease, the 

 horse's feet can only be kept tit for easy and safe action by cutting 

 •away the surplus hoof: in the other, the sensitive feet ean only be 

 protected by the assistance of some material harder than the hard. 

 tough hoof itself. 



143. — The object of shoeing should, of course, be to give the 

 necessary protection with as little additional weight as possible, 

 •and, what is of more importance, with the smallest amount of 

 interference with the elasticity which lessens the violent concussion 

 of the horse's great weight and speed, on roads necessarily made 

 so hard and unyielding. The men who so long contrived to get 

 paid for torturing tlie horse with their physic, their lancet, their 

 bhsters, and their firing irons, also undertook to superintend his 

 shoeing, and were as ready to improve upon nature witli his foot 

 as they were with his stoinaeh, skin, or blood vessels. Nature had 

 done everything wrong; so these presumptuous meddlers set to work 

 to improve the horse's foot by cutting away the frog, the sole, the 

 bars, and all the middle of the foot, and then put a heavy ring of 

 iron under the outside edge. This unyielding iron ring was nailed 

 all round to what remained of the foot, so that nothing, but the 

 play of the pastern, was left to protect his overtaxed nerves and 

 sinews, on roads harder than nature intended them to meet, with 

 all her softening buffers. 



Ii4. — With this treatment, the loot constantly contracted, so 

 that the horse that had long been shod in that way, had soon 

 •quite a different shaped foot to the unshod colt ; one that would 

 not go a mile without a shoe, and often went lame with one. 



The height that the thick and often turned down, or calkined, 

 shoe carried the horse from the ground, put an extra strain on 

 everything, and lessened his safety and efficiency, as certainly as a 

 high heeled boot does that ot a lady. Nature fought against all 

 this as best she could for many generations, but there is a limit to 

 the long suffering even of the horse and his owner, and many jter- 

 sons have lately arrived at the conclusion that nature knows better 

 how a horse's foot should be made than either a veterinary surgeon 

 or a blacksmith. What Sir Chaides Forbes, Doetoi's Bostock, 



