INTRODUCTION, T 



adapted to some different condition of the foot, and design- 

 ed either for curing- some disease or for correcting some 

 fault in gait. 



During the past five years Mr. Rich has shod, probably, 

 twenty-five hundred horses of all kinds, sound, lame and 

 crippled. 



He is now traveling, accompanied bj^ several assistants, 

 giving lectures in important towns in New York State 

 and Pennsylvania. After explaining in one of his lectures 

 all about the structure of the foot and how horses ought to 

 be shod, he is called upon to shoe a great many horses who 

 have been more or less injured by bad shoeing, and in near- 

 ly every instance he succeeds in accomplishing what is 

 regarded b^^ ordinary blacksmiths as wonders. 



Of course he has now reached a point where he is, 

 pecuniarily speaking, doing well, but he derives full as 

 much satisfaction from the knowledge that his efforts to 

 ameliorate the condition of that noble animal, tlie horse, are 

 appreciated, as from an3^ gain which comes to him from his 

 work. He is acting in the capacity of a missionary 

 among horse-shoers, and is teaching hundreds of them, 

 who have previously had but crude notions about the art, 

 how to shoe horses artistically and scientifically. 



