farriers' fictions. 75 



severely cut away, the frog never entirely recovers its original 

 efficiency, and will be a very long time before it will be even 

 moderately useful. At the same time the enamel, like the enamel 

 covering our finger nails, which covers the whole of the outside 

 of the colt's hoof, and etfectually retains its moisture and supjile- 

 ness, is rasped away to make his foot fit the shoe, and to give it 

 a round and uniform shape. Thus two of natui'e's most important 

 provisions to secure an elastic tread, are ruthlessly destroyed, 

 and the horse compelled henceforth to stump and jar away with 

 his sensitive foot and loaded sinews resting entirely on the dried 

 and unyielding crust of his hoof, made still more unyielding by 

 being nailed to an iron ring. 



147. — Then the soft horn that covers and protects the sole 

 or bottom of the foot is pared away, as if it had been put there 

 by some bungler who did not understand his business, and thus 

 the farrier is secure, that whenever his shoe comes off", the 

 unsupported, thin, brittle, outside crust, which alone has been 

 left, will break away, and bring the horse down on to the 

 mutilated frog and sole, now quite unfit to bear any such weight. 

 This means, of course, that he cannot go a mile without being 

 shod again, when his frog and sole will be again pared, his 

 enamel rasped off, and the farrier's customers educated to believe 

 that shoeing is a blessing of which they can never have too 

 much, and that a horse without a farrier would be of no more use 

 than a horse without a foot. 



148. — Now, instead of acting as if convinced that nature has 

 done everything wrong, and that we cannot too completely take 

 the horse's foot out of her hands, we ought to look at nature's 

 work with reverence, and to feel quite sure that there is a wise 

 design in every part of that foot, as we see it unmutilated on the 

 unshod colt. If it fails to bear all we require of it, it is only 

 because we want it to work on roads which we have made 

 unnaturally hard and grinding. If we approach the horse's foot 

 with this feeling, our aim will rightly be to interfere as little as 

 possible with nature. We shall remember that every nail we put 

 into the hoof is an injury to it ; that the best iron or steel is not 

 half so good as the tough, light, elastic horn which nature provides, 



