go HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



shoeing, and as evidenced in the quotations just referred 

 to. The art of fastening metal plates on their horses' feet 

 is unpractised, and was probably unknown until a few 

 years ago ; so that strong hoofs with them is a matter of 

 much importance, and from year to year these are un- 

 touched by any instrument ; indeed, they become in- 

 juriously over-grown when the animal is not allowed 

 sufficient exercise ; and at all times they are permitted to 

 grow crooked and mis-shapen, just as wear or disease may 

 allow. On unpaved roads, cases of lameness are not rare, 

 and where long journeys have to be performed over rocky 

 mountains and along stony paths, the hoofs must suffer 

 very much. To obviate this inconvenience, the ingenious 

 Japanese have been compelled to resort to sandals which 

 are identical in principle, and not far removed from them 

 as regards material, with the solece spartece of Vegetius 

 and Columella. The invention of these is probably coeval 

 with the introduction of their beautiful hardy little horses, 

 as the people themselves wear shoes of a similar con- 

 struction. Though made of rice-straw for ordinary wear 

 on the horses of the humbler classes, and of silk or cotton 

 stuff for those of girindees, yet their use is universal ; and 

 if the large number worn out in a day's journey by one 

 horse be any criterion of what will be expended in a busy 

 commercial town, the manufacture of these slippers must 

 give employment to very many people (fig. 4). Riding 

 horses do not always wear them, and when they do they are 

 generally fastened only on the fore feet, as on these the 

 weight chiefly falls ; but the pack-horses — which form, 

 with bulls, the only means of conveying m erchandise by 

 land, carriages not being in use — nearly always have sandals 



