504 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



have not had a horse lame since, except when pricked by 

 the artist ; and it is a matter of the greatest astonisiiment 

 to me, how any other form of a shoe could ever come 



into general use This flat shoe is not to be made 



with a smooth surface, after the French manner, but chan- 

 nelled round, or iv/iat is called fullered, after the Knglish 

 manner ;'' by which the horse is better prevented from 

 sliding about, and the heads of the nails are less liable to 

 be broken off'; both which inconveniences attend the 

 shoe whose surface is smooth.' 



The best mode of preventing horses from ' cutting ' is 

 next dealt with ; and in treating of the value of turning 

 horses out to grass without shoes, we learn that Osmer 

 was perfectly cognizant of the expansive properties of the 

 horse's foot, about which so much discussion and dis- 

 covery has been made in this century, though his views 

 are rational and perfectly correct ; which is more than can 

 be said for those of the majority of succeeding theorists. 

 He admits the value of Lafosse's ' lunette ' or ' crescent ' 

 shoes, in certain cases, chiefly in those where the hoofs are 

 contracted : ' In such a shoe the heel of the horse rests in 

 some measure upon the ground, receives some share of 

 weight, and is, by means of such weight and pressure, kept 

 open and expanded ; by which expansion of the heels the 

 compression on the interior parts of narrow-footed horses 

 is removed, and he that was before lame is, by degrees, as 

 the foot spreads, rendered sound — if there be no disease in 

 the interior parts of the foot. Again, where horses have 



' Osmer is the first writer I can discover in England who speaks of 

 this 'fullering' as English. The reader will remember it as Burgundian, 

 or ratlier German, and prevalent in the fifth century. 



