THEIR FEED AND THEIR FEET. 113 



who refuses to allow that the body of the horse was 

 made stronger than his legs and feet, and holds that 

 these, if left to themselves, must be adequate to the 

 tasks imposed on them. In his beliei^ '' it is amongst 

 the foremost physiological truths that Nature is a strict 

 economist," and that " man has for ages labored to 



disarrange parts thus admirably adjusted No 



injury, no wrong, no cruelty can be conceived which 

 barbarity has not inflicted on the most generous of 

 man's many willing slaves." But although he has 

 thus seen " the folly of contending against those or- 

 ganizations which govern the universe," he still 

 thought that the employment of some sort of shoe 

 might not lie open to this charge. Shoes of some 

 sort may give to the horse the freedom which is es- 

 sential for the health of the foot, although he insists 

 that all the shoes thus far used are lamentable failures. 

 "There are," he says, "many more pieces . of iron 

 curved, hollowed, raised, and indented than I have 

 cared to enumerate. All, however, have failed to re- 

 store health to the hoof. Some by enforcing a change 

 of position may for a time appear to mitigate the 

 evil ; but none can in the long run cure the disorder 

 under which the hoof evidently suffers." » Such lan- 

 guage, it might be thought, could come only from 

 one who had discarded the use of .shoes altogether. 

 All, however, that Mr. Mayhew has done is to point 

 the way to the road which he was not prepared to 

 take. But the experience of Miles and Mayhew, La 

 Fosse, Charlier, and Douglas seems to lead by neces- 

 sary logical inference to one conclusion only. If the 



