i4<5 



HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



24 



at the chateau of the Counts of Champagne (fig. 24). It 



is catalogued as being of the 

 sixteenth century ; but this 

 is evidently an error ; it does 

 not belong to that, nor yet 

 to very many previous cen- 

 turies. 



In a French antiquarian 



publication/ it is mentioned 



that when destroying a 



Roman bridge to construct 



the Canal de Bourgogne 



'there was found in the joints of the stones forming the 



body of the chaussee, a horse-slioe.' Unfortunately no 



description is giv^en. 



The Abbe Cochet mentions a small shoe with six 

 nail-holes and uneven border, which was obtained from 

 the marshes of Dompierre-sur-la-Somme. It resembled 

 that found at Chavannes by M. Troyon. The collection 

 of M. Houbigant, at Nogent-les-Vierges, contains several 

 antique shoes, but the Abbe says nothing of their origin, 

 save that one of them, belonging to a mule (?), and with 

 six nail-holes, was fished up in the river Oise, in 1842, 

 not far from Creil, where the same antiquarian had fixed 

 the Roman station of Litanobriga. The other shoes were 

 collected, to the number of one hundred and fifty, not far 

 from a Roman road at Nogent-les-Vierges. They had a 

 fullering or groove around their circumference, and were 

 so small that it was supposed they were intended rather 

 for mules than horses. 



' Mem. des Autiq. de la Soc. de France, vol. xii. p. 47. 



