41 8 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



In all probability, on the eventful night on which the 

 treasure was lost, the waggon and horses conveying it 

 were also left to perish in the Dove. 



From the examination I have been able to make of 

 the other shoes, it appears that the horses were small. 

 One specimen would, when perfect, have been about 4^ 

 inches wide, and ^}y long. It had a small raised (not 

 rolled-over) calkin on one side ; only three nail-holes were 

 visible on each branch, and the shoe altogether was very 

 narrow and light, as if it had been worn by a saddle- 

 horse. The iron appeared to be fibrous and of excellent 

 quality. Another half-shoe was a trifle smaller, had three 

 holes on each side, and the calkin was formed by doubling 

 over the end of the thin branch, as in the Chedworth and 

 Gillingham specimens. Completely encased in a compact 

 slab of rusty-coloured conglomerate, a portion of which 

 has been removed, is one more example that may have 

 been a little larger, though it is still a small shoe, and 

 would fit a horse between 14 and 15 hands high; while a 

 fragment of another, though about the same dimensions, 

 had a little more cover or breadth, and probably was worn 

 by one of the waggon-horses. 



None of these show any traces of toe-clips ; all have 

 the even border of the present shoe, and their holes are 

 the ordinary quadrilateral apertures with which we are 

 now familiar; they have not been fullered or widely 

 stamped for the nail-heads. Both surfaces appear to have 

 been plane ; and altogether the shoes are not of a bad type, 

 but one that, if the hoofs were not mutilated by paring, 

 could do a horse but little harm. 



In the interesting chronicles of Froissart, we find many 



