sill. 



PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. 



In publishing a seventh edition of my book I feel, that I 

 should be wanting in courtesy to those, who have done me 

 the honour to render another edition necessary, if I permitted 

 it to o-o forth without some notice of the doubts, wliich a few 

 persons have attempted to cast upon the fact of the expan- 

 sion of the horse's foot. During the years 1849 and 1850 

 many elaborate and ingenious experiments were made, and 

 much was written with the view of proving, that the horse's 

 foot does not possess the power of expansion. If that fact 

 can once be established, we need trouble ourselves no further 

 about the mode, in which our horses are shod, for a bar of 

 iron, nailed from heel to heel, would be as good a shoe, as 

 we could adopt. Now I have not the smallest disposition to 

 approach this subject in the spirit of controversy; but, as 

 every observation in my book, and every direction therein 

 contained, is based upon the assumption, that the horse's foot 

 does expand, I feel myself bound to state plamly, why 1 

 suppose it does so, and also to explain the grounds, upon 

 which that opinion is formed. 



I shall pass over any theoretical deductions, drawn from 

 the anatomical structure of the foot, and confine myself en- 



