244 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



two.' No mention is made of bones of horses, or other 

 articles, being found with it, but the skeleton of a man was 

 found at some little distance. 



Mr Clark, who was somewhat of an enthusiast in the 

 matter of shoes and shoeing, and appears to have lost no 

 opportunity of examining old specimens, though he pre- 

 viously believed that this art was only introduced into 

 Britain by the Normans, confesses these Silbury shoes to 

 have been the oldest he ever saw or heard of, and appears 

 to have been rather puzzled by them. In all likeli- 

 hood, as he remarks, the animal to which they belonged 

 had been buried with them, since the nails were present 

 in them, as in many of the Gallic specimens, with the 

 clenches quite perfect and in their flexed state, which 

 would not have been possible had the shoe been torn off 

 while the horse was alive. This veterinarian acknowledges 

 the shoes as truly exhibiting an early period in the history 

 of the art. ^ Their mould or general form is neither 

 broad nor heavy, as in the oldest French shoes we have 

 ever seen, but they are rather what would be called a light 

 shoe. In their upper surface (foot surface), flat, a little 

 concaved, however, inwards, and at the inflections per- 

 fectly flat. The under surface of the shoe is rounded a 

 little and convex, or rising in the middle, having in each 

 of the quarters three immense deep oval or oblong stamp- 

 holes or countersinks, as mechanics would call them, not 

 very near to the outer rim of the shoe, and perforated 

 through in the middle of these cavities, with three large, 

 almost square, perforations ; the size of these, which time 

 and oxydation may perhaps have a little enlarged, gave 

 abundant opportunity for the early artisan to direct his 



