541 



offer snch convincing testimony of a vast amount of careful thouglit 

 and patient study of at least some of the principles of their very im- 

 portant profession as many of these devices afford, tiie bulk of such 

 work should be permitted to fall into the hands of a set of incompetent, 

 ignorant, and ofttimes unprincipled bunglers, who prey upon the cre- 

 dulity of their employers and inflict upon the most generous of all our 

 dumb servants an amount of injury which curtails the period of his use- 

 fulness and results in his premature decadence at an age when he ouuht 

 still to be in his prime. It is possible, if not probable, that in the fu- 

 ture it may become a less invidious task to discuss this much vexed 

 problem. In this age of marvelous ingenuity, is it visionary to hope 

 that it is within the power of chemistry to develop some preparation 

 which, applied to our horses' hoofs in a liquid or pultaceous form, will 

 quickly harden into a substance closely resembling the natural horn, 

 which will enable us to dispense altogether with the heavy, unyielding 

 iron, and while it affords the necessary protection to the foot will per- 

 mit it to retain to the full its wondrous combination of lightness, 

 strength and elasticity, and enable it to perform its varied functions 

 under the most exacting conditions which advanced civilization can 

 impose, with that marvelous trinity of apparently incompatible charac- 

 teristics unhampered as they left the workshop of the Creator, all act- 

 ing together in perfect harmony and absolute efficiency ? 



In the meantime it behooves us to make the most of the means Mithin 

 our power. Our horses are national property. Surely, therefore, it is 

 time that the possibility of a great national economy was recognized, 

 and some legislation formulated which would require an established 

 standard of attainment in a class of workmen to whose care property 

 of such value is habitually intrusted, and upon whose proficiency, or 

 the reverse, so much of its utility or comparative worthlessness depends, 

 while it, at the same time, provided for some means of practical instruc- 

 tion which contemplated raising the science of horseshoeing above the 

 baneful influences of ignorance and traditional routine, to that position 

 to which its importance to us as a people justly entitles it. 



