IGNORANCE OF FARRIERS. 233 



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and why ? Of course, to protect his feet from being 

 bruised by stones, etc. Nature has provided that 

 the sole of a horse's foot should be thick, and 

 sufficiently so to protect the foot from possible 

 bruises, nor could any substance have been better 

 devised for the purpose than horn. Yet the wilful 

 pigheadedness, the crass ignorance, of farriers, persists 

 in cutting away the very protection which Nature 

 has given the horse, and paring and hollowing out 

 the sole. You may ask why. / can't tell you ; 

 nor can they. ' It has been the custom,' they say ; 

 they can give no other reason. They pare away 

 the sole ; they cut away the crust ; they rasp the 

 delicate fibres so as to encourage the horn, so 

 exquisitely designed by Nature to be tough, to 

 become brittle ; every stroke of the hateful rasp 

 tears open and destroys numberless conduits of 

 lubricating oil — and why ? again I may repeat. 

 Simply and solely because, it being their trade to 

 fit a shoe to a horse's foot, they, being too clumsy 

 to do so, fit the horse's foot to the shoe. Horn is 

 such a pleasant, easy material to cut and carve at, 

 and looks so nice when smeared over with some 

 filthy black oil — and iron is so hard; it takes such 

 a lot of labour, and it is so very difficult to make 

 the shoe fit as it should. That is the reason, and 

 if they were honest, that is what they would answer. 



