108 HORSES AND ROADS. 



shoe made on professor Coleman's principle. It is 

 not a ' patent ' shoe. 



At the beginning of March, as * Will Watch ' ^ 

 says, farming operations are too backward to allow 

 of reducing the work of farm horses sufficiently to 

 do away at once with all iron on their feet ; neither 

 did the writer intend, for many reasons, to incite the 

 owners of such hard-worked animals to make such an 

 abrupt change. A gradual mode of proceeding will 

 allow the horses to keep on at their work ; and it will 

 not cause so much apprehension to the owner nor so 

 much opposition and eternal grumbling, or ' kicking 

 over the traces ' on the part of the carter, especially 

 when he has such a handsome inducement held out 

 to him, in case of success, as ' half the saving in the 

 blacksmith's bill,' which this gentleman so spiritedly 

 ofifers him. 



Unfortunately, as he remarks in his letter, farriers 

 do not, as a rule, * care to know much about the 

 Charlier shoe,' and this has already been pointed out 

 in these articles. Yet one gentleman has written 

 that he has made of one ' an ardent disciple,' and 

 that ' he shoes beautifully ' on this system ; also 

 that he finds it to bring grist to his mill. In some 

 places where farmers could carry out by union what 

 has been before suggested, a man might be found 

 who would be willing to go into the thing. However, 

 where the difficulty about the Charlier system is 

 insurmountable, there is another road out of the wood, 

 which ' Aberlorna ' appears to have already hit upon, 



* See Appendix B. 



