44 THE IK) RSI.. 



our common fate. Saintbel, whom I knew personally, 



was a respectable man, and of repute for professional 

 ability, in his own country; but knowing little of 

 English horsemanship, or of the modes of shoeing 

 best adapted thereto, he committed errors which he 

 did not survive to correct. J lis successors were still 

 less practical men, but they had the volumes of an- 

 cient and long experience before them, and have since 

 had a long series of years for practical improvement: 

 and it must finally be conceded, even by those who 

 make the loudest complaints touching the errors and 

 mismanagement at the Veterinary College, that it has, 

 at least, answered the great purpose of its institution, 

 as a theatre wherein veterinary science may be con- 

 centrated, and the art practised for the general im- 

 provement and benefit of the country. 



Among an infinity of writers, each and every one 

 of whom lias vouched for the infallibility of his form 

 of shoe, and his method, but unfortunately for their 

 reputation, or views, and the public benefit, no such 

 infallibility has been proved, leave arisen at differ- 

 ent periods, visionaries who have made a doubt of 

 the necessity of any application of iron to the foot of 

 the horse; alleging that nature herself having so 

 amply defended the animal's foot, the injuries and 

 ruin so universally incident to it, were rather the con- 

 sequence of shoeing than of the horse's labour. A 

 theory of this kind neither merits investigation nor 

 reply, in England at any rate. 



Many real improvements in the art, and in vcteri- 

 narv surgery, supposed to be of late discovery, may 

 be found in the old continental writers. Ceesar 



