HORSESHOEING A NATIONAL QUESTION, 207 



to fall into the habit of docking those of both 

 parents, we should soon get a breed of horses with 

 a diminished number of vertebrae. If the minus 

 reappears in the offspring, it is presumable that the 

 plus will reappear likewise. The j^l^^s is often to be 

 ascribed to shoeing. 



Where our horses most fail is in their feet and 

 legs. It was lately stated at a meeting in England 

 that French statistics have shown that in their army 

 two- fifths of all cast horses were so cast for ' worn 

 out feet and legs.' Let us take a common-sense 

 (which will turn out to be the most scientific) care 

 of our horses' feet by the use of the brake on 

 wheels, and not a clumsy substitution in the shape 

 of a calked shoe on the horse's foot. The frog is a 

 "natural calk, but it must have fair play. It is 

 pointed in front like a ploughshare to offer resistance 

 in one direction. To offer resistance in the contrary 

 direction it is semi-cloven, and thus it offers a double 

 resistance, for the very evident reason that a horse 

 needs more aid to go ahead than he does to stop him- 

 self. Yet the two ends have been rightly balanced 

 by Nature, if we could only see the thing as such. 



We have the authority of previous writers that 

 the shoeing question is a national one, and that much 

 economy is in store for the nation if any improve- 

 ment can be introduced. The real fact is that 

 millions annually hang upon this very hinge, because 

 we are obliged, through the short lives of our horses, 

 to import weekly a large number of hideous foreign- 

 bred brutes, many of which are mares, which, when 



