642 



HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



was oozing through, before these cumbrous shields were 

 applied. Words cannot describe the agony a horse must 

 experience when he chances to put his foot on a sharp, or 

 even a blunt stone. And yet the writers who have counselled 

 this mutilation of the foot, have laid this tenderness — the 

 limping gait, and falls with broken knees — to the nails of 

 the shoe preventing expansion ! Plates of leather cover- 

 ing the delicate frog and sole, and layers of tar and tow, 

 are brought into requisition to compensate — though such 

 is not confessed — for the loss of the horn ; but with very 

 small results. In a brief time, the whole of the foot be- 

 comes dwarfed ; the frog, deprived of its natural function, 

 like the muscles of a paralyzed arm, becomes atrophied, 

 diseased, and almost disappears, the sole becomes still 

 more concave and hard, and the foot towards the heels 

 narrower, as in figure 206. 



At the same time the unfor- 

 tunate creature begins to move 

 as if in pain ; the flexor tendon, 

 on its course over the navicular 

 bone, has lost its support, and 

 has from the first shoeing been 

 acting at a very serious disad- 

 vantage. The mutilation of the 

 hoof, by removing the best por- 

 tion of its horn, at the very time 

 it was most required, has inflict- 

 ed serious injury on it and the bone over which it has 

 to })lay during its arduous task of flexing the foot and 

 limb ; while the heavy iron shoe, and the increase of 

 concussion it engenders on artificial roads, all tend to 



fig. 206 



