324 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



such a chaussure. Always, however, out of respect for 

 the opinion of others, we have never cast a doubt on the 

 use of the socks for the Roman horses, because their em- 

 ployment for this purpose may have been one of those 

 unfortunate essays of their military chiefs. Elsewhere in 

 Switzerland, so few of these strap-shoes {feis a courroies) 

 have been found, that it appears probable such a mode of 

 shoeing, if it did exist, was for but a brief period. On 

 the contrary, it is our conviction that long before the 

 arrival of the Romans among the Gauls, the Sequanias, 

 Helvetiae, and Rouraks, in the vicinity of the Jura moun- 

 tains, shod their horses as we now do. The almost total 

 absence of calces Jerrecp in our districts confirms this 

 opinion ; which is, it is true, in disaccord with that of 

 some archaeologists, who only introduce nail-shoeing in 

 the Roman armies towards the loth century of our era, 

 and as an importation by the nations of the North.' ' 



And M. Delacroix, when describing the shoes found 

 in Besanqon, makes a similar protest against these articles 

 being designated hippo-sandals. ' Modern science, in the 

 face of ancient authors mentioning horse-shoes, thinks it 

 ought to consider as such the objects whose use is as yet 

 unknown, which are found in ancient roadways, and to 

 which it has been imagined to give the n3.me of hippo- 

 sandals. The figure of some hippo-sandals might, justly 

 or unjustly, have authorized such an explanation of their 

 use ; the collection of a tolerably large number of these 

 articles, however, dispels the illusion. There are in the 

 Archaeological Museum of Bcsanqon hippo-sandals pro- 

 vided with long hooks before and behind, and even on 

 ' Mem. de la Soc. d'Emulation dii Doubs, p. 132, 1863. 



