THEIR FEED AND THEIR FEET. 



117 



sound in tips that can not endure any further pro- 

 tection," adding the significant comment that the 

 moral of this is ^' that it is the shoe, not the road, that 

 hurts the horse "; for if a weak and tender foot can 

 go sound when all but unshod, " why should not the 

 strong sound one do the same ? " The conclusion, as 

 he insists, should rather be that a horse must have a 

 strong, sound foot to stand not our work, but our shoe. 

 The same writer, speaking of the cruelties unwittingly 

 perpetrated by grooms and blacksmiths on the horse's 

 foot, says that '' though lameness usually attends 

 their efforts, they ascribe it to every cause but the 

 right one, and indeed resign themselves complacently 

 to the presence of many diseases confessedly caused 

 by their treatment." " Free Lance " has seen, and 

 others also have doubtless seen, light horses, of high 

 breed and value, shod or burdened with a full set of 

 shoes in which eight nails, nearly three-sixteenths of 

 an inch in thickness, were driven four in each quarter, 

 and in a space of three inches for each four nails. 

 He may well call attention to the immense amount 

 of laceration and compression which the delicate 

 hollow fibers of the crust must have suffered when 

 thus wedged up within a fourth of their natural 

 dimensions. Besides this, he adds, the hoof was, in 

 one instance, carved out on the crust to receive three 

 clips, one on the toe and one on each quarter. " A 

 calk, three-quarters of an inch high, was put on one 

 heel of each hind shoe, and on the other heel a screw 

 cog of equal height. On each front shoe a cog, also 

 three-quarters of an inch high, was put upon each 



