6oo HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



knees, 2in6. shrinking of the shoulders. It also prevents the 

 nails striking the ground luhile the foot is sensitive from 

 shoeing." ' We may conscientiously doubt the correct- 

 ness of some of these statements, others are palpable 

 absurdities, while others again are so obscure as to puzzle 

 us. In the £rst place, ' cold-shoeing,' as it has been 

 termed, was, so far as I can ascertain, the only method 

 employed in this country and on the continent before 

 the 1 6th century; so that if our researches into the 

 antiquity of shoeing prove anything, they prove that a 

 patent was scarcely needed to make a monopoly of 

 this method in the middle of the 19th century. We 

 have also shown that, in the opinion of the highest 

 veterinary authorities, it is impossible to shoe a horse so 

 well in this way as by fitting the hot shoes to the hoofs. 

 This is known to every one who has had any experience 

 of horses or horse-shoeing; and the injury supposed to 

 be caused by the judicious employment of this means of 

 adjusting the shoe is purely imaginary, and the result of 

 inexperience. The horn has no vitality, being inor- 

 ganic. 



This subject has often been discussed, but not, as we 

 have seen recently, as it has been definitely decided that 

 there was no foundation for the blame attached to hot- 

 shoeing — as it may, though inappropriately, be termed. As 

 horse-owners may, however, be misled by the statement 

 that fitting the shoe to the hoof while warm injures and 

 weakens the horn, it may be as well to assert that the 

 very opposite is the result, and that the method recom- 

 mended by Mr Goodenough is really the one that injures 

 and weakens the horn. We have already given some 



