34 HORSES AND ROADS. 



to make it fit the shoe, just as if the hoof were a 

 mere block of horn, instead of every part of it being 

 composed of an outside, or so-called, insensitive 

 covering to an inside corresponding one, which is 

 usually denominated sensitive, because it is more 

 sensitive than the outside one. If he should find 

 that the shoe best suited to his fancy should be too 

 long, he proceeds to shorten it by turning up more 

 calk at the heel. 



Now, calks are a great abomination, be they 

 ever so slight. They were conceived by ignorant, 

 unreflecting people, in order to act as brakes ; which 

 brakes, we have seen, should be applied to the 

 wheels of the cart, instead of to the horse^s foot. 

 Nature has determined the right ' tread ' for a horse ; 

 calkins, by raising the heel, interfere seriously with 

 her designs. All the interior parts of the horse's 

 foot are shaped in harmony with the exterior ; the 

 coffin bone is wedge-shaped, and, when the foot is 

 tilted up behind, it is forced into the wedge-shaped 

 interior concavity of the toe. This is one of the 

 causes of seedy toe, sandcrack, and laminitis, com- 

 monly called ' fever in the feet.' ]VIr. Douglas 

 happily calls to mind that raising the heels also 

 shortens the stride. 



Is it customary to put calkins on the shoes of 

 race horses ? From an illustration of the ' plates ' 

 they wear, given by Mayhew in his ' Illustrated 

 Horse Management,' it appears that they do not run 

 in calkins = stride counts ; and trainers have found 

 out thus much, however short they may still be in 



