CHAP. IV.] EDUCATION OF THE SMITH. 491 



diseases are constitutional, or residing in the blood, 

 and may originate sand-crack, fever in the feet, 

 quittor, and the like, but produce no curb, canker, 

 surbating, corn, or those other twenty alleged dis- 

 orders of the bottom of the feet before alluded to, 

 unless the foot be harmed in some manner or other. 

 Under each of those heads of information, we 

 shall presently place before the operative reader a 

 few plain and intelligent precepts, accompanied by 

 some fatherly admonitions ; for most assuredly, that 

 teacher who contents himself with telling the learner 

 what is necessary to be done has but half performed 

 his duty, if he leave uncorrected certain long-stand- 

 ing errors, which he knows to exist, and to have 

 received the sanction of ages that were confessedly 

 working in the dark, as regards horse-shoeing 

 above all other operations. But the method of per- 

 forming this operation is avowedly not to be taught 

 in its rudiments, upon paper. Practice is indis- 

 pensable, manual labour requisite ; and much of it, 

 conducted by an intelligent mind well versed in 

 books, is necessary towards forming the proficient 

 shoeing-smith. Hitherto, however, from the nature 

 of the black-smith's trade, its laboriousness, and the 

 deficiency of general education down to a late 

 period, most of the operatives in this branch of 



without aclcnowledgvient ; and intending honestly to amend our want 

 of precision, he substitutes the bladder (as being more particular) for 

 our "urinary organs," and thereby destroys the whole passage, on 

 which his argument mainly relied for support, because the bladder 

 effects no such lameness. 



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