46 HORSES AND ROADS. 



they are harnessed. If they were a little more 

 observant they would discover that these horses 

 were sounder in their feet and legs than are our 

 London cab horses, which are shod to death, and 

 most of them unsound and lame on all four feet (or 

 legs). 



By our ordinary mode of shoeing, in which about 

 seven nails is the average we employ in each hoof, 

 we are still doing, to a certain extent, the mischief 

 of which La Fosse was guilty. We wedge up and com- 

 press the horn with the nails to the extent of about 

 one-twelfth instead of one-fourth. How, then, can 

 we wonder if the hoof, deprived of its full 

 supply of nourishment round its edges, becomes 

 brittle and dry ? Can ' hoof ointments ' or cowdung 

 supply the place of the natural secretions? Mr. 

 Miles, a Devonshire squire, for many years used 

 three nails only on his own horses, and he found 

 them all the better. He had not reflected on the 

 reasons above stated (they are original with the 

 writer, who thought them out for himself, and has 

 never seen them referred to in any work, otherwise 

 he would have acknowledged the source from which 

 he got them, as he always does when he draws upon 

 others) ; but he was in search of means which might 

 allow expansion and contraction, and he put only 

 one nail on the inside of the foot, and near the toe, 

 the two remaining nails being on the outside part of 

 the hoof. This gentleman made very clever practical 

 experiments as to the extent of natural expansion 

 and contraction ; and in his work, ' Miles on the 



