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96 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



the vicinity of Chatham ; though the soles and frogs of 

 their hoofs were unprotected, save by the natural thick- 

 ness of horn, which appears to be more abundantly 

 secreted the more it is exposed to attrition. 



When considering the best mode of protecting and 

 preserving the foot by shoeing, we will again have occa- 

 sion to refer to this system. 



Since the foregoing sheets were sent to press, we 

 learn that another ' new ' method of shoeing has been ' in- 

 vented,' and this time, we are told, in America — that 

 quarter of the globe where horses were unknown until 

 more than a quarter of a century after Fiaschi's work had 

 been published at Spire, and where the European settlers 

 have carried their ideas of the utility of this creature to 

 as extreme a degree as the dwellers in the old country. 

 This new invention, it would appear, has been for some 

 time before the American public ; though the majority 

 of horsemen in this country were ignorant of its startling 

 merits until the loth of December, 1868, when a leading 

 journal brought it into prominent notice by devoting a 

 portion of its space to a description, that certainly reads 

 far more like an imitation of some of the choice American 

 advertisers than a sensible notice by a modest writer who 

 understood his subject. 



It has been our somewhat wearisome task to examine 

 and describe several of the numerous patents sought and 

 obtained for particular modes of shoeing, or special kinds 

 of shoes, but which, in reality, had no right or claim to be 

 so protected, presenting as they did no novel features, and 

 having been in use — some of them, many centuries before. 



