4 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



employed to ride and drive him without a bit in his 

 mouth, but no invention or device of man could have 

 compensated for the absence of his solid, hoof-cased foot. 

 From the earliest ages, the attention of horsemen and 

 horse-loving nations has been directed to the conservation 

 or perfectioning of those attributes which make this ever- 

 willing slave so worthy of our admiration and gratitude ; 

 and those horses which had the best conformation, and 

 proved themselves fleetest and hardiest, were ever selected 

 as models for breeding and purchasing. And curiously 

 enough, though it was not to be wondered at, nearly every 

 one of the ancient writers, when speaking of the horse, 

 centre their attention on his feet ; no matter how beauti- 

 fully formed the other points of his conformation may 

 have been, if his feet were defective, all was bad. The 

 excellent horseman and gallant soldier, Xenophon, to 

 whose extant treatises on the horse we are indebted for so 

 much of what we know of equestrian matters in the an- 

 cient world, tersely specifies how essential even in his day, 

 when the uses of this animal were more limited, it was 

 that he have good feet, or there was no profit in him. 

 He says : ' In respect to the horse's body, then, we assert 

 that we must first examine the feet ; for as there would 

 be no use in a house, though the upper parts were ex- 

 tremely beautiful, if the foundations were not laid as they 

 ought to be, so there would be no profit in a war-horse, 

 even if he had all his other parts excellent but was un- 

 sound in his feet ; for then he would be unable to render 

 any of his other good qualities effective.' ' 



And from the days of Xenophon to the present, when 



' De Re Equestri. 



