SHOEING IN ENGLAND. 593 



This authority concludes, that whether the preplantar 

 system of shoeing succeed, or, like so many other systems, 

 fail, its inventor had none the less done good service, in 

 showing what was vicious in the present mode of French 

 shoeing, and how easy it was to benefit horses by making 

 their shoes lighter ; already, the opponents of the new 

 method were beginning to see the advantage of reducing 

 the metallic surface, and that this narrowing of the shoes 

 was entirely due to the example given by M. Charlier. 



Professor Bouley was, perhaps, not aware of what had 

 been done in England, in this respect ; and that in this 

 century M. Charlier's modification had been largely an- 

 ticipated. Goodwin and Fitzwygram had demonstrated 

 the necessity for leaving the soles un pared, and had con- 

 clusively shown that these parts would, to a certain extent, 

 sustain pressure from the shoe. Coleman, Gloag, and 

 others, had shown that the frogs could only be main- 

 tained in a healthy condition by performing their natural 

 fimctions ; Turner, Miles, and Fitzwygram had proved 

 that shoes could be retained by a comparatively small 

 number of nails ; and Moorcroft and Mavor, that nar- 

 row shoes were advantageous in preventing slipping. 



Another good result of this method of shoeing in 

 France, was to enlighten the veterinary profession and the 

 farriers of that country, with regard to the pernicious 

 cradle-like shape they gave to their clumsy shoes, in what 

 they termed the ajmture. This unseemly, and appar- 

 ently unreasonable, fashion had been maintained and 

 strenuously defended since the days of Bourgelat ; and its 

 effects must have been very prejudicial, especially when 

 improperly applied. The plane-surfaced preplantar shoe 



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