LJURENTIUS RUSIUS. 397 



Riisius, Ruzo, de Ruccis, Ruse, Rugino, Rosso, and 

 Riso — for by all of these names is he designated in the. 

 many editions of his writings), a veterinary surgeon of 

 Rome (as he styles himself), and a friend of Cardinal 

 Napoleon de Ursinis, who lived in the 13th and 14th 

 centuries. His observations on the maladies of the 

 lower animals, though similar to those of Ruffus, are, for 

 the time in which they were written, remarkably exact, 

 and on shoeing, though brief, they are yet reasonable. 

 ' It is necessary to shoe horses with good and proper 

 shoes, shaped like the hoofs ; the more the extremities of 

 the shoe — the heels, are narrow and light, the more easily 

 will the horse lift his feet ; and the narrower the shoe is, 

 so much more will the horn grow. It is also advantageous 

 to know, that the oftener we shoe a young horse, so 

 rapidly does the horn become thin and weak ; and, on 

 the contrary, to accustom it to travel without shoes while 

 it is young, is to make the hoofs larger and stronger.' ' 

 In other chapters, the diseases of the foot, many of them 

 arising from shoeing, are carefully described. 



In the nth century, I think we have the first written 

 intimation that oxen were shod for travelling. Guibert 

 de Nogent, a contemporary of Peter the Hermit, and 

 who has so well and so eloquently described the almost 

 morbid excitement attending the preaching of that worthy 

 in favour of the Crusades and the rescue of Jerusalem, 

 gives as an illustration, that of ' the rustic, 2v/io shod his 

 oxen like horses, and placed his whole family on a cart ; 

 where it was amusing to hear the children, on the ap- 



' La Mareschallerie de Laurens Ruse. Paris, 1563. Translated from 

 the Latin edition published at Spire in i486. 



