in otlier words at the part of the lever furthest removed 

 from tlie fulcrum, where the j^ower is most multiplied ; as if 

 the object really had been to render so simjjle a matter as 

 retaining a shoe as difficult, as possible. One gentleman told 

 me, he had tried to shoe with six nails, but it did not 

 answer; his horse had cast a shoe; and he had consulted 

 a clever coachman about it, who had quite convinced him, 

 that it might perhaps do for very easy road work, but 

 could never answer for any other. Tliis conference entirely 

 settled the question with him ; and the facts of the 13th 

 Light Dragoons having shod all their horses for years with 

 six nails, and several of my friends %vith five, while I only 

 employed three, and of his own horse having retained the other 

 shoe, all went for nothing against the opinion of this clever 

 coachman. Now I [happen to known, that the smith, who put 

 on the shoe, said at the time of doing so, that he had never 

 before shod so brittle a foot : this is the kind of evidence, 

 upon which many a waverer has no doubt been induced to 

 abandon the plan altogether ; and strong evidence too, as far 

 as he is concerned ; for all he would know about it, would 

 be the fact, that the horse was shod with six nails, and Jiad 

 cast a shoe. No one ever stops to inquire into causes, which 

 he does not care to comprehend. The undue weight, attached 

 to the opinion of smiths and stable people by tlie great 

 majority of horse-masters, is a matter very pamful to con- 

 template ; it is the humiliating submission of conscious 

 ignorance to the imperious dictates of inferior minds upon a 

 subject, where a very few hours of earnest and well directed 

 study would impart a degree of knowledge, more than 



