SS^ HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



somewhat fashionable to shoe horses in stables, and Mr 

 Miles says of it : ' The practice of shoeing horses in 

 the stable, away from the forge, where there is no possi- 

 bility of correcting any defect in the fitting of the shoe, is 

 so utterly opposed to reason and common sense, that I 

 should only have adverted to it as a custom of by-gone 

 days, exploded with the use of the buttress and the notion 

 of chest founder, if I had not actually witnessed its per- 

 petration within the last year, and that, too, in the stables 

 of gentlemen by no means addicted, upon other matters, 

 to yield their judgment a ready captive to other men's 

 prejudices. Now if either of these gentlemen had hap- 

 pened to ask the smith what he was doing, the answer 

 would, in all probability, have awakened him to a sudden 

 conviction that he was giving his countenance to a most 

 unphilosophical proceeding ; for the smith would have 

 told him that he wasjitt'uig a shoe to the horse s foot, which 

 the gentleman would at once perceive to be impossible, in- 

 asmuch as he had no m.eans at hand whereby to effect the 

 smallest change in the form of the shoe, however much it 

 might require it ; and the truth would instantly force 

 itself upon him, that the man was fitting the foot to the 

 shoe, and not, as he supposed, the shoe to the foot. To 

 fit the shoe to the foot without the aid of anvil and forge 

 is impossible ; and any one acquainted with the exactness 

 and precision necessary to a perfect fitting would not 

 hesitate to declare the attempt to be as absurd as it is 

 mischievous.' Some excellent examples are given of the 

 injury and inconvenience likely to arise from this stupid 

 fashion. 



In this accuracy of fitting the shoe by burning it to 



