DESCRIPTION OF ANCIENT HORSE-SHOES. 141 



of France boasted in all ages. A superior officer of 

 cavalry, who is much more occupied with the varieties of 

 horses than antiquities, exclaimed, on seeing this lot of 

 shoes, that they had all belonged to Arab horses. Their 

 width varies from 31 to 4^ inches ; their length from toe 

 to heels 4 to 4f inches.' ' 



The Celtic or Gallic, and the Gallo-Roman shoes, as 

 we may then fairly designate them, possess a remarkable 

 identity, and their special features it may be here con- 

 venient to notice a little more closely than in the report 

 furnished by M. Delacroix of the interesting and valuable 

 collection made in Besanqon, where shoeing appears to 

 have been largely practised at a remote epoch. Their 

 most noteworthy characters are four in number: i. The 

 general shape of the shoe with regard to size, weight, and 

 width of cov'er ; 2. The shape of the nail-holes; 3. The 

 outer border ; 4. The nails. In shape, the Celtic and 

 Romano-Celtic shoes are extremely primitive, i. Their 

 form is irregular and deficient in outline ; the majority of 

 the specimens I have seen give one the idea that the Druid 

 smiths and their immediate successors (if they were really 

 the workmen) did not possess an anvil with a bick-horn, 

 or beak, to fashion them to the proper shape. The width 

 of their surface is irregular, but in no instance have I ob- 

 served it to be anything like that noted in shoes of the mid- 

 dle ages ; and their thickness is inconsiderable. The size 

 varies, but is always small, and such as would suit diminu- 

 tive round-footed horses, or little horses with long, mule- 

 shaped hoofs. None of the shoes have toe or other clips, 



' Delacroix. Memoires de la Soc. d'Emulation du Doubs, 1863, 



p. 20'-220. 



