102 Management and Treatment of the Horse. 



vicious practice, and should upon no account be 

 allowed. Many grooms will allow the smith ta 

 pare the sole '' to clean it out," as they say, not 

 thinking that by that very act they are doing 

 their best to cause the horse to become affected 

 with laminitis. The sole of the horse's foot is 

 only about the sixth of an inch thick after the 

 foot has been deprived of what the shoeing-smith 

 calls the dead horn, but what JS'ature placed there 

 as a hard wearinsj substance. That I^ature in- 

 tended it to protect the sole is beyond a doubt, 

 it being devoid of that elasticity which the true 

 sole has, making those flakes the more valuable 

 to the horse as a protection against the stones he 

 has to travel over ; yet shoeing-smiths, owners 

 of horses, and grooms, for the sake of making 

 the horse's foot look neat and clean, will have 

 that taken away which God in His wisdom 

 placed there for the mutual benefit of man and 

 horse. Yiewed from below, the sole commonly 

 presents an arch of more or less concavity. It 

 is subject to vast variety in degree of the arc: 

 in some feet it is of surprising depth, and in 

 others the arch is converted into a flattened sur-r 

 face, yet both seem to perform equally well. In 

 the hind feet the sole is generally more arched 

 than in the fore, and approaches in figure more 

 of an oval than a circle. That portion elevated 

 from the ground, which forms union with the 

 bars, is nearly double the thickness of the central 

 or circumferent parts, and next to this in sub- 

 stance comes the heel. This is situate at the 

 back part of the foot, at which point the crust 



