23 



ber of nails indispensable to tbe security of a shoe, it by 

 no means follows, that it is therefore prudent, or expedient 

 to adopt it for general use. The cliief value of such 

 knowledge is the unanswerable argument, it supplies, against 

 the supposed insufficiency of five. 



I do not know, that any very great advantage is to be 

 expected from three or four nails over five, further than the 

 confirmation of the valuable and important fact that a shoe 

 can be securely retained by a few nails ; and, that being 

 the case, the fewer we employ in reason, the better ; because 

 the smaller the number, the larger will be the intervening 

 spaces of sound horn, to nail to at the next shoeing. 



Many persons will no doubt be inclined to ask, how it 

 happens, if this really be a matter of such vast moment, 

 as I represent it, that veterinary surgeons and farriers have 

 never made an eliort to arouse the public to a sense of its 

 importance : I answer, that although there is not one of 

 either class, who would not admit, that it is most desirable 

 to leave the foot free as far, as a due regard to the security 

 of the shoe will permit, still there are very few, if any, in a 

 position to have experimented upon it, as I have done ; very 

 few keep more horses, than they have positive work for ; and 

 therefore they cannot afford either to be thrown out in their 

 journeys, or to risk laming the horse by continuing them, 

 if he should chance to throw a shoe ; and they are not very 

 likely to meet with patriotic friends, who would lend their 

 horses for experiments, which they had dechned to make 

 upon their own. But there is another and a stronger rea- 

 son to deter them from prosecuting any very fine drawn 



