718 SHOEING. 



host of other maladies of a more or less serious character. 1 am of 

 course always speaking of the anterior extremities. 



" This evil of paring or rasping must be looked upon as the 

 greatest and most destructive of all that pertain to shoeing, or even 

 to our management of the horse. Nine-tenths of the workmen 

 who resort to this practice cannot explain its object, and those who 

 have written in defense of it say it is to allow the descent of the 

 sole and facilitate the lateral expansion of the hoof. 



"Fancy our gardeners cutting and rasping the bark off our fruit 

 trees, to assist them in their natural functions, and improve their 

 appearance; and yet the bark is of no more vital importance to the 

 tree than the horn of the sole wall and frog are to the horse's foot. 



fi The sole, frog, and bars m.ust on no account, nor tinder any condi- 

 tions, unless those of a pathological nature, be interfered with in any 

 way by knife or rasp. As certainly as they are interfered with, and 

 their substance reduced, so surely will the hoof be injured. Nature 

 has made every provision for the defense. They will support the 

 contact of hard, soft, rugged, or even sharp bodies, if allowed to es- 

 cape the drawing knife; while hot, cold, wet, or even dry weather 

 has little or no influence on the interior of the foot, or on the ten- 

 der horn, if man does not step in to beautify the feet by robbing them 

 of their protection, perhaps merely to please the fancy of an igno- 

 rant groom or coachman. 



"If we closely examine the upper surface of the sole of a hoof 

 that has been separated from its contents by maceration, we will 

 find it perforated everywhere, by myriads of minute apertures, 

 which look as if they had been formed by the point of a fine needle. 

 If we look also at the vascular parts of the foot that have been in 

 contact with this horny surface, it will be observed that they have 

 been closely studded with exceedingly fine, yet somewhat long 

 filaments, as thickly set as a pile of the richest Genoa velvet. 

 These are the villi, or papillae, which enter the horny cavity and 

 fitting into them like so many fingers into a glove, constitute the 

 secretory apparatus of the frog as well as the sole. Each of the fila- 

 ments forms a horn tube or fibre, and passes to a certain depth in 

 a protecting canal whose corneous wall it builds. When injected 

 with some colored preparation, one of them makes a beautiful micro- 

 scopical object, appearing as a long, tapering net-work of blood- 

 vessels, surrounding one or two parent trunks, and communicating 

 with each other in a most wonderful manner. These filaments are 

 also organs of tact, each containing a sensitive nerve, destined to 

 endow the foot with the attributes of a tactile organ. 



" This distribution will enable us to realize, to some extent, the 

 amount of injury done by paring. The horn thrown out for their 

 defense and support being removed by the farrier's knife, and per- 

 haps the ends of these villi cut through, the meager pelicle remain- 

 ing rapidly shrivels up, the containing cavity of each vascular tuft 

 as quickly contracts on the vessels and nerves, which, in their turn, 

 diminish in volume, disappear, or become morbidly sensitive, through 

 this squeezing influence. The feet of a horse so treated are always 



