lo HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



differently broken in, unshod, and had never been stall- 

 fed.' ' 



Dr Browne reports of the horses in Jamaica: ^ They 

 are generally small, but very sure-footed and hardy, which 

 renders them extremely fit for those mountainous lands ; 

 and their hoofs are so hard that they seldom require 

 shoes ; but this is the effect of the heat of the country 

 and dryness of the land.' ^ 



Iron shoes are not used for horses in Japan, and Head, 

 in his ride across the Pampas of South America, tells us 

 that shoes are utterly unknown to all the South Am.erican 

 country horses. ' But even when unshod, the wear of 

 their boundless plains, on which scarcely a stone is seen, 

 is so insignificant, that to keep the hoofs of a proper 

 length, they have even to be shortened by the hammer 

 and chisel.' ^ Another traveller in that region asserts that 

 the mule of the Peruvian Sierras, with its massy and well- 

 rounded hoof, needs no shoes on hard or soft ground, in 

 summer or in winter. 



Clark says of the north of Sweden : ' Neither the men 

 nor their horses are shod, but go bare-footed. In some 

 parts of Sweden, as at Naples, the hinder feet only of the 

 horses are left unshodden ; but here horses of a beautiful 

 breed were put to our waggon, without a shoe to any of 

 their feet, as wild and fleet as Barbs ;' and again, when en- 

 tering Finland from Sweden, he writes : ' The horses are, 

 as usual, small, but beautifully formed, and very fleet. 

 The peasants take them from the forests when they are 



' Lake Nganii, p. 339. 



" The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, p. 487. London, 1756. 



3 A Ride Across the Pampas, p. 387. 



