82 flemming's alternations. 



top face of the shoe, may be screwed into these holes for ordinary 

 wear. Other steel plugs with chisel-pointed heads, must also be 

 tightly fitted into the shoes for use in frosty weather, and a supply 

 of them kept in the stable. Whenever the state of the roads 

 demands it, the square-headed plugs may be screwed out, with a 

 small hand vice, and the chisel-headed ones screwed in, and 

 renewed as often as may be necessary. Mr. Flemming is said to 

 have successfully accomplished the same purpose, by using 

 unscrewed square holes, with very slight bevel, into which square 

 accurately fitting steel plugs can be driven. A supply of these 

 nails and screws, or steel plugs must be kept on hand, and may 

 be put in, in a few minutes any frosty morning without having to 

 teach your horse to skate and wait for hours at the besieged 

 smith's forge. Horses walking on their frogs never slip so badly 

 as those whose frogs have been destroyed. 



1G4. — Under a growing sense that iron is too heavy and 

 unyielding to be a suitable foundation for a horse's foot, many 

 substitutes have been tried, and many of them are more like 

 nature, but no one has yet succeeded in securely fastening any 

 elastic material to the foot. Consequently all substitutes for 

 iron or steel have been very generally abandoned. The only 

 elastic material that can be securely and entirely relied on, is the 

 horse's own safe and useful frog, which we have for centuries 

 so ruthlessly and ignorantly discarded as unfit for its work. 



