72 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



motives of pride and display, or from urgent necessity, 

 the shoeing was of the most simple kind, and much as 

 they were accustomed to cover their own feet in a sock 

 of leather or pelt by enveloping the whole surface. It is 

 not improbable that the portion covering the front of the 

 hoof may, when display was wanted, have been gilded, or 

 covered with gold or silver, and the under portion also 

 strengthened by gold, silver, bronze, or iron plates. That 

 this was the case we find amply illustrated elsewhere in 

 Vegetius' writings, where he speaks of lemnisci, which were 

 doubtless intended to strengthen the solea, and may have 

 been of strong leather, or even iron ; a circumstance of 

 some importance to remember. In the following passage 

 this is found more particularly noticed : ' Pedes quos sanos 

 habet glante ferreo vel si defuerit, spartea calceabis, cui 

 lemniscos suhjides^ et addita fasciola diligentissime colli- 

 gabis, et suppositicum facies parti illi quae misera est, ut 

 planas ungulas possit ponere.'' 



The glante ferreo is found for the first and only time 

 here, and Bracy Clark thinks that it may have been only 

 an insertion into, or corruption of, the text with which, by 

 frequent transcription, the work abounds. He adds : 

 ' There is, however, something very singular about it, for 

 glans signifies an acorn, the fruit of the oak, and the 

 figure which this fruit presents projecting from its cup, 

 would, if divided by a longitudinal section, not badly re- 

 present the figure of the modern horse-shoe, or a section 

 of its cup would do the same ; but as nothing is said of 

 nails for fastening it on, it cannot properly be considered, 

 without other collateral evidence, to mean any such thing. 



' Lib. iii. cap. i8. 



