68o HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



travelling upon artificial roads, we cannot discuss in this 

 place. Certain it is, however, that in countries where 

 horses are unshod, these diseases are rare, if not alto- 

 gether absent. 



In North Carolina, for instance, at a former period, 

 horses did not wear shoes ; and it has been asserted that 

 they did not then suffer from the diseases of the feet and 

 legs they now do.' 



In mentioning this, however, we must take into ac- 

 count the fact that unshod horses do not always perform 

 the same amount of severe labour, or undergo such long- 

 continued exertion, and that there are generally no hard 

 roads. 



We can understand, nevertheless, how improper shoe- 

 ing may induce diseases of this kind. Look at the horse 

 which has been shod upon 'improved principles,' whose 

 hoofs have been pared according to the directions given 

 in some of the standard treatises on shoeing ! He is 

 not exactly lame — he is not quite a cripple — but is only 

 tender in his feet. His soles have been ' thumb-tested,' 

 to prove that they were thin enough ; the miserable 

 shred of horn remaining, and into which thousands of 

 the most beautiful sensitive villi pass, is rapidly shrink- 

 ing on these minute processes ; in doing so it squeezes 

 them painfully and unrelentingly, each in its narrow 

 tube, as in a closing vice. The surface of the sole feels 

 hot as fire, and the animal stands resting, first one foot, 

 and then the other, showing symptoms of general un- 

 easiness. What would the poor brute not give to get 



' Darwin. Animals and Plants under Domestication, Brickell. 

 Nat. Hist, of North Carolina, 1793. 



