30 HORSES AND ROADS. 



and pernicious system, when their masters have 

 differed from them, they have on purpose lamed 

 horses, and imputed the fault to the shoes, after 

 having in vain tried, by every sort of invention and 

 lies, to discredit the use of them.' 



Mr. Lupton, M.R.C.V.S., only three years since 

 approved the opinion that ' the master who makes 

 the welfare of his steed subservient to the idle 

 prejudices of his groom, is fitly punished in the 

 lengthened period of his animal's compulsory idle- 

 ness, appropriately finished by the payment of a 

 long bill to the veterinary surgeon.' And, of farriers, 

 he says : 'Farriers ought to go through a course of in- 

 struction previously to being allowed to operate upon 

 structures, the anatomy, physiology, and economic 

 uses of which they have never studied, and, con- 

 sequently, never understood.' When people have 

 been having this kind of thing continually impressed 

 upon them for such a length of time, it seems 

 strange that they have not long since taken the 

 management of the part of the horse that requires 

 the greatest supervision and intelligence out of the 

 hands of two such ignorant sets of people. 



' One horse can wear out four pairs of feet.' That 

 is because the feet are ill treated. Mr. John Bright 

 has discovered, through thirty-four years' experience, 

 and a loss of SOOl. in the shape of printing, that 

 ' farmers do not buy books ! ' One would hardly 

 have thought that. We know that they not only 

 buy papers, but that they are also extensive con- 

 tributors to them. 



