544 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



invariably failed after a short time. No general form of 

 shoe will suit every horse — no general arrangement of the 

 nail-holes will suffice for every foot ; and these quickly 

 and cheaply-made articles, in addition to the many defects 

 which machine-made shoes will always have, possess 

 one which is perhaps the most serious of all — the softness 

 of the iron. This is so great, that the horse must either 

 carry a most clumsy and injurious mass of material of 

 the consistency of lead, or be shod far more frequently 

 than the soundness of his feet will permit. Malleable 

 cast-iron shoes, capable of sustaining a low temperature 

 in order to alter them to suit different feet, have also been 

 patented and tried wdth no better success than the ma- 

 chine-made shoes. Unlike them, however, they proved 

 too hard ; and if they escaped the dangers of a tempera- 

 ture which could scarcely be designated a red-heat, or of 

 a few gentle taps of the hammer, and were nailed to the 

 hoof without flying about in a number of pieces, they 

 either smashed when brought into contact with the pave- 

 ment, or proved so slippery that many horses were injured 

 by falls with them. 



Before concluding our history of the art of shoeing in 

 England, it will, perhaps, be instructive to refer to two 

 works, one of which has had a large sale and has passed 

 through many editions, having been translated into one 

 or two foreign languages ; the other being the more 

 valuable of the two, though apparently not so well known. 



The first of these, by Mr Miles,' is what might be 



' The Horse's Foot, and How to Keep it Sound. Eightli edition. 

 London, 1856. Also, A Plain Treatise on Horse-shoeing. 3rd edition. 

 i860. 



