'NATURE IS A STRICT ECONOmST.' 59 



tough horn which the unshod colt possesses is a 

 ' roughing ' with which Nature sends him into the 

 world, and which no artificial means can compete 

 with. Why, then, should farriers ignore such an 

 obvious fact, and direct all their perseverance and 

 inventive powers to controvert Nature's designs ? 

 ' Because he who is uneducated and unable to com- 

 prehend principles can neither profit by his own 

 experience nor abandon the paths of prejudice and 

 custom.' 



Mayhew says : * It is amongst the firmest 

 physiological truths that Nature is a strict econo- 

 mist, and never does anything without . intention ' 

 (every one of education ought to know this without 

 having their attention called to it by Mayhew, or 

 in these pages) ; ' that every enlargement or every 

 depression — however insignificant it may appear to 

 human eyes — is a 'permanent provision for some 

 appointed purpose, and has its allotted use in 

 the animal system.' How, then, can the ignorant 

 farrier, or anyone else, by carving the hoof to his 

 own fancied artistical shape, be doing otherwise than 

 upsetting Nature's fearful and wonderful designs? 

 ' Man has for ages laboured to disarrange parts thus 

 admirably adjusted. When so employed, he has only 

 followed the example of the savage who destroys the 

 product he is incapable of understanding. No injury, 

 no wrong, no cruelty can be conceived, which bar- 

 barity has not inflicted on the most generous of man's 

 many willing slaves.' 



Another writer observes that ' appealing to the 



