STABLE REFORMS. 219 



laorse master to tliis day. It treats of almost all the ills 

 to wliicli the hunter is subject^, with one exception — he 

 never mentions "mud fever .■'^ So I suppose that this 

 is an evil of modern date, although I can remember its 

 existence ever since I have hunted, and that is some 

 time ; and it has nothing to do with clipping, for I have 

 had a horse affected with it which had its natural winter 

 coat on. But " Nimrod/'' excellent and practical as is 

 his work (with this exception), falls into the mistake of 

 paring the sole. He says, " From La Fosse downwards 

 to the writers of the present day, fears have been 

 expressed of the ill consequences of paring the sole, 

 which my experience cannot confirm.''' His idea was to 

 prevent the sole growing too thick, and consequently 

 losing its elasticity ; but as the sole never attains more 

 than a certain thickness, and then scales off of itself, 

 showing a new sole ready for work underneath, I cannot 

 see the force of his reasoning. So much for the practical 

 man — now for the theorists. La Fosse, by the way, first 

 demonstrated the possibility of a horse going with his 

 foot on the ground instead of on the shoe only, and 

 invented a system of shoeing very similar to that of M. 

 Charlier, but not so good. Nevertheless the idea of the 

 Charlier shoe was no doubt taken from the shoe which 

 La Fosse invented. The idea that the horse ought to 

 walk as Nature makes him do, with his foot on the 

 ground, never gained much of a position in England 

 until lately. ''Nimrod," indeed, thought little or 

 nothing of frog and sole pressure while his horses were at 

 work, and professed to despise the frog and its offices 

 thoroughly. But his precept and practice differed here, 

 as his horses went barefoot in the summer, and he speaks 

 of the benefits experienced by the horse walking a certain 



