190 HORSE-SHOEING. 



heated shoe to the requisite shape ; and it is almost, if not quite, 

 impossible to obtain a perfectly true and solid adaptation of the 

 upper face of the shoe to the horn on which it is to rest, within 

 any reasonable time, unless it be fitted to the hoof in a hot 

 state. 



Hot and Cold Fitting. — For very many years the two systems of 

 fitting horse-shoes in a cold and a heated condition to the hoofs 

 have been extensively and severely tested, and the result has 

 been that cold fitting- is, as a rule, only resorted to when circum- 

 stances prevent the adoption of the other method, or when the 

 owner of a horse, imagining that the hot shoe injures the foot,, 

 incurs the risks attending a bad fit to guard against his imaginary 

 evil. 



It is needless, in a brief essay like the present, to enter into 

 a relation of the observations and experiments which have estab- 

 lished the undoubted and great superiority of what is termed 

 "hot" to ff cold" fitting. These will be found noticed at some 

 length in a work recently published by me, entitled " Horseshoes 

 and Horseshoeing." It may be sufficient to state that the evils 

 supposed to result from fitting the shoes hot to the hoofs are 

 purely chimerical. It is true, when the sole is excessively mutil- 

 ated should the farrier keep the heated shoe too long in contact 

 with it, injury would doubtless follow, but this accident is so 

 exceedingly rare as to be scarcely ever known, even in forges 

 where shoeing is performed in the most objectionable manner. 

 The ill effects imagined to arise from hot shoeing can easily be 

 traced to the operal ion of other causes, not the least of which is 

 the fashion of paring the lower face of the foot. 



The chief objections to cold shoeing are the want of solidity, 

 the foot being made to fit the shoe, and the process being more 

 difficult and expensive. 



The defective solidity is patent to every one who has had any 



