10 



were sent in, the chief prize being awarded to G. S. Fleming, 

 Esq., of London. Mr. Fleming's essay contemplates only the 

 correct principles upon which a sound foot should be shod. 

 It left untouched the wider and more important question as to 

 how the feet of horses in a diseased and semi-diseased conditions 

 should be shod ; more important because of horses in actual 

 service at the present time, I do not think that one in twenty 

 may be said to have a perfectly sound foot; and still more im- 

 portant, inasmuch as the methods or principles involved in 

 restoring a diseased foot to healthy conditions, will point, in- 

 fallibly, to the manner in which it should be shod to preserve 

 healthy conditions, while no amount of ordinary horse-shoeing 

 for the sound foot will teach methods of shoeing for the un- 

 sound foot. The term, pathological shoeing, refers to shoeing 

 diseased feet ; physiological shoeing, to shoeing the sound foot. 

 Some prefatory remarks to Mr. Fleming's essay, made by the 

 Secretary of the S. S. P. C. A., have a peculiar appropriateness 

 here. He says : " It is a painful reflection, that the advance of 

 civilization seems ever to be accompanied by certain evils, and 

 in no instance is this more marked than in the terrible amount 

 of suffering unnecessarily endured by the Horse. This ani- 

 mal, pre-eminently the most useful to man, is the one upon 

 which is inflicted, either wantonly, or through sheer ignorance, 

 or thoughtlessness, the greatest amount of cruelty. The re- 

 cords of all humane societies, show that of prosecutions for 

 cruelty to animals, an overwhelming majority refer to the horse, 

 and of these a large proportion are for working horses, while 

 suffering from lameness in one form or another. So frequent 

 are such cases, that observers have concluded that its preva- 

 lence must result from some specific cause; and not unnatu- 

 rally attention has been directed to the various modes of man- 

 agement practiced relative to the horse's foot, to the manner 

 of shoeing, and in particular to the way in which the hoof is 

 prepared for the shoe." Here, then, is an illustrious prece- 

 dent, if any were needed, in the most progressive city in the 

 world, whose collective characteristic is to lead rather than to 

 follow ; for the Chicago Branch of the Illinois Society for the 



