OF SHOEING. 37 



go more comfortably and more safely by following 

 the same unerring guide. 



Mr. Hallen did not argue for any arbitrary degree 

 of " turn up" at the toes, but for a general princi- 

 ple, viz., so to shoe the horse that there should not 

 be an unnatural degree of wear at one part, and an 

 almost total absence of it at others. 



It will be found, however, that in practice most 

 horses, as we might expect in the adoption of a 

 natural system, require very nearly the same degree 

 of turn up at the toes. 



There are, no doubt, exceptional cases. The 

 author some years ago had a horse with very flat 

 feet, which, as animals with such feet usually do, 

 went much on his heels ; he shod that horse with 

 straight shoes, because, with his particular action, 

 such shoes produced an even wear. A friend soon 

 after attacked him with not daring to apply his own 

 principles of turned-up shoes to a horse with bad 

 feet ; but the author believes that in shoeing that 

 horse with straight shoes he was obviously consistent 

 to his own principle of so shoeing horses that the 

 wear should be even all over the foot. 



41. The evils occasioned by the ordinary straight Evils occa 

 shoes may be briefly summed up as follows: — 1st, a strafght^ 

 tendency to contracted heels, and shrivelling up of 

 the frog, from the absence of a legitimate proportion 

 of wear at the back of the foot ; 2ndly, stumbhng, 



