140 Mmiagemeiit and Treatment of the Horse. 



it can sustain, the result being a fracture of the 

 horn." 



High caulkings, and indeed caulkings of any- 

 kind, are a curse to the horse, and until a class 

 is opened for instructing the blacksmith in the 

 fundamental principles of the foot, the absurd, 

 foolish, and ridiculous system of shoeing will not 

 improve. The old smiths will tell us that they 

 have shod horses upon that principle all their 

 lives, and their fathers did so before them, so 

 they must know; and they instil this doctrine 

 into their apprentices, and after they have served 

 their time they in their turn become as pig- 

 headed as their teachers, and strongly opposed to 

 any alteration of the system. The man who 

 dares to assert that there can and ought to be 

 improvements made is considered a raving lunatic. 

 The treatment I have always adopted in sand- 

 crack is that which was recommended to me by 

 Mr. Broad, of Bath, and his brother in London. 

 If my patient is lame I immediately put on a bar- 

 shoe. A bar-shoe is a round shoe, not a common 

 shoe made of bar-iron, fitted full at the toe with 

 a clip on each side, but having no bearing oppo- 

 site the crack. The shoe is fitted long, and made 

 thin at the heel, the object being to enable the 

 horse to bear his weight on the heels, which he 

 can do better in this shaped shoe than any other, 

 or indeed even without a shoe, at the same time 

 applying plenty of cold water to the coronet. 

 Nothing will make the horn grow so fast as 

 plenty of cold water. Some people order poul- 

 tices, but they are difficult to keep on ; holes are 



