74 THE HOItSE AND ITS PTr^JEASES. 



capacities proportionably interested in its effects, who 

 have not the least right to be excluded their share of 

 knowledge for the ostentatious introduction of pedantic 

 phraseology. 



Such connected chain of useful information, divested 

 of obscure references to remote considerations (tliat only 

 to erect one mystery upon the basis of another) must 

 certainly prove much more applicable to the intentional 

 purport of common conception and general improvement, 

 than the many labored dissertations, whose titles promise 

 so much, and the learned contents of which communicate 

 so little, to be generally understood. 



And here I would enter a protest, not only against 

 the suggestions of the ignorant, which 1 invariably 

 receive with profound contempt and the pity they merit, 

 but also against those gentlemen enlightened by versatile 

 attainments, who imagine that they can dictate to a 

 skilled operative farrier, the best method of performing 

 the operation of shoeing, because perhaps they have at 

 some time cast a desultory glance over a work on 

 veterinary i>raetice, and given undue consideration to 

 that important department of the science denominated 

 shoeing. 



Such suggestions aie, in the words of the immortal 

 Shakspeare, " wasteful and ridiculous excess," for it 

 cannot be expected that the uninitiated, no matter how 

 clever in general information, can pretend to that theo- 

 retical and practical knowledge which the votaries of 

 that particular department possess. 



I would respectfully suggest to my readers to make 

 any fitting observations they like on the way a horse 

 travels, and trespass not on the province of the farrier, 

 because many horses have been ruined from the dogged 

 perseverance with which they seek to have their sug- 

 gestions carried into execution. 



It will be observed by the foregoing, that many 

 professors of the veterinary art, have differed in their 

 opinions as to the horse shoeing system, and the style of 



