PAEIXa AKD RASPINa. 80 



incalculable. It is impossible to condemn too strongly the 

 practices referred to if carried to an undue extent. To 

 what legitimate extent the practices in question may be carried, 

 the reader may ascertain immediately. Common sense will 

 tell any man who will reflect upon the matter, that if the feet 

 are cut and rasped without judgment, and to a greater extent 

 than the horn is grown during the intervals of shoeing, the 

 animal will speedily become useless, from the want of 

 protection to the sensitive structures within the hoof ; yet this 

 is regularly done by at least three-fourths of the farriers in the 

 kingdom. Hoofs of the best class, and those which grow the 

 most vigorously, only produce horn at little more than 

 five-sixteenths of an inch per month ; while bad hoofs, or those 

 which are thin, weak, and low at the heels and quarters, do not 

 produce the material so rapidly even as this. All that the 

 farrier should remove, are those loose cakes of horn attached to 

 the sole, and this is especially necessary in order to bed the 

 shoe carefully to the rim of the foot. A single cut with the 

 drawing knife beyond this, is productive more or less of injury. 

 The frog, unless diseased, should never be cut ; the functions of 

 this organ being of too important a character to be interfered 

 with. 



Immediately above the frog, are a number of structures 

 which in combination form two most important articulations, 

 viz., the Coffin and the Navicular Joints ; and the principal use 

 of the frog is to afl'ord protection to the parts in question; 

 consequently to cut away this organ, or any portion of its 

 substance, is to remove the natural protection from these joints 

 and structures, and thereby unnecessarily expose them to 

 injury. "We have no hesitation in saying that thousands of 

 horses have been ruined by the practice alluded to. My advice 

 is, LET THE PEoa ALOifE. With my own horses, I do not allow 



