4y8 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



the horse's foot, was making progress. Though Osmer's 

 observations are mainly based on the teachings of Lafosse, 

 yet he does not blindly follow that celebrity, but having 

 carefully tested the mode of shoeing advocated in the 

 ' Nouvelle Pratique,' points out its defects in a very fair 

 and reasonable manner. He is the first writer on this 

 subject who gives us a good idea of the way in which the 

 art was practised in England ; and in doing this, he is par- 

 ticularly severe with those artisans whom Hogarth, in his 

 picture of the ' Enraged Musician,' has delineated as 

 wearing a cross-belt of bright blue decorated with golden 

 horse-shoes, the badge of the peripatetic farrier. ' If you 

 pretend to have your horse shod according to your own 

 mind, it is a general saying amongst these men that they 

 do not want to be taught ; which is as much as to say, in 

 other words, there is nothing known in their art, or ever 

 will be, but what they already are acquainted with. . . . 

 If you ask one of these artists his reason for acting in this 

 or that particular manner, or should inquire of him the 

 use of any part assigned to some particular end, he can 

 give no answer, nor even pretends to have any knowledge 

 thereof, but is guided by custom alone.' 



After remarking on the necessity for shoeing in some 

 countries and not in others, and the probable simplicity 

 of the earlier attempts to defend the hoofs, he says, ' in 

 process of time, the fertility of invention, and the vanity 

 of mankind, have produced variety of methods, almost 

 all of which are productive of lameness ; and I am 

 thoroughly convinced, from observation and experience, 

 that 19 lame horses of every 20 in this kingdom, are lame 

 of the artist, which is owing to the form of the shoe, his 



