74 DAWNING LIGHT. 



Benjamin Bush, and other first-class physicians, have done to ex- 

 pose the rash experiments, and the presumptuous meddlings with 

 nature practised by many of their profession on human subjects ; 

 those shining lights of the veterinary art, Lafosse and Fleming, 

 have done to show up the vile treatment which the horse's foot 

 has so long received. Horse owners are greatly indebted both to 

 those intelligent, scientific, and practical veterinary surgeons, for 

 their uncompromising denunciation of the too common destroyers 

 of the horse's foot, and to the Scotch Society for the Prevention 

 of Cruelty to Animals, for having brought out so many good 

 essays on the subject, and for giving such prominence to Mr- 

 George Fleming's admirable prize essay on horse shoeing. 



145. — Much pity has been expended, and principally 

 wasted, on the " poor child," or the " poor horse, without 

 a shoe to its foot," which might have beeir better directed 

 to the poor children, and poor horses, whose well formed 

 springy feet, have been condemned to wear heavy, tight, 

 clumsy, unfittmg, unyielding shoes. The labourer's child, whose 

 calves dwindle away to " mop sticks," because the child has been 

 compelled to give up walking and springing, as nature intended 

 him to, and to swing at the end of his legs a few pounds of ox 

 hide and iron that will never bend with his wonderfully elastic 

 feet, is hardly more injured and disabled than the horse, whose 

 natural springs and elastic protectors are all cut away, to be 

 replaced by a clumsy, ponderous, unyielding iron ring. 



146. — The first journey that the young horse makes to the 

 blacksmith's shop is generally the last in which he has the 

 advantage of all the kind provisions which nature has made for 

 his feet. The farrier there, too often makes him his patient for 

 life, by ruthlessly cutting away the elastic cushion, called 

 the frog, which is nature's natural support for the great flexor 

 tendon. This cushion is nature's provision to support the centre 

 of the horse's foot, to take ofi" the strain from the sensitive 

 lamina3 with which the hoof is connected with the foot, to 

 prevent the extreme depression and consequent strain on the 

 flexor tendon, and to break the concussion caused by the horse's 

 great weight coming so rapidly to the ground. When once 



