MAYHEW OX THE MULTIFORMITY OF SHOES. 185 



of a horse's foot must be kept oif the ground, ' or 

 else why does he limp when he loses a shoe ? ' This 

 settles the thing at once with the master, and he 

 shuts up, instead of giving the thing fair considera- 

 tion and investigation, and talking it over with other 

 owners to obtain an interchange of ideas. People 

 do not like to do this, because, as Bracy Clark said : 

 ' No man likes to make inquiries about horses, for 

 that would imply a want of knowledge.' This nail got 

 another blow on the head lately from ' Caractacus,' 

 when he said in the ' Farm Joumal' : ' Unfortunately 

 it forms too prominent a feature of the average 

 Englishman's vanity to affect to know much more 

 about the horse than he really does.' As a general 

 rule, that is what is the matter with them ; but 

 in the affair of treatment of the foot they tacitly 

 acknowledge that stable-helpers and farriers under- 

 stand it better than themselves, and so they leave 

 these two lumps of ignorance to make arrangements 

 between them over such a small affair, heedless of 

 the not time-honoured maxim, ' No foot, no horse.' 

 Thus, these worthies have become authorities on 

 shoeing, to the prejudice of professors who were 

 almost at their wit's end to grapple with the question. 

 Mayhew says : ' No shoe can give that which 

 is dependent upon motion^ — expansion is motion. 

 ' There are many more pieces of iron curved, hol- 

 lowed, raised, and indented than I have cared to 

 enumerate. All, however, have failed to restore 

 health to the hoof. Some, by enforcing a change 

 of position, may, for a time, appear to mitigate 



