182 THE HUNTING FIELD 



fastenings of some sort. Now it is a notorious fact, though 

 we dare say EHjah Bullwaist will deny it, that the same man 

 cannot make both shoes and nails. Bullwaist will make what 

 he calls nails just as he makes what he calls shoes, but if any of 

 our readers will pop into a veterinary forge, or well-conducted 

 smithy, he will tind making nails and making shoes are dis- 

 tinct departments, nay, in many, that making nails, making 

 shoes, and putting them on, constitute three separate branches. 

 Let the shoes be ever so good and ever so well put on, it is 

 clear that they are of no use, especially for hunters, unless 

 they will stay on, and that staying on depends almost entirely 

 upon the make and quality of the nails. 



We do not know a more graceless, thankless office, than 

 telling a man he has lost a shoe, particularly if the discovery 

 is made in the middle of a run. We wonder if any person 

 ever got thanked for such information. Shoe-losing is one of 

 the drawbacks upon foxhunting, and one of the greatest argu- 

 ments for the second horse system. A man with a second 

 horse looks at his nag's feet at a check with very different 

 feelings to the man who has merely a spare shoe at his saddle. 

 The man with his groom behind him with a second horse can 

 afford to be civil when he is told he has lost a shoe : he has 

 nothing to do but change horses, just as he would change his 

 plate at dinner. But the man with but one horse, no spare 

 shoe, and no knowledge of where a blacksmith is to be found, 

 has a very dejected melancholy air as he turns from the hounds 

 and rides about among the country people, asking if they can 

 tell him "where to find a smith ?" Shoe cases are now so 

 common that the exception is seeing a saddle without one, 

 and there are divers patent contrivances extant for self-fasten- 

 ings and self-adjustings, that might be very useful if the 

 patentee was in attendance to work them, but which had 

 better be discarded in favour of the common shoe, with a few 

 nails to set it on with. 



