42 . TIPS AND TOE-WEIGHTS. 



another di'awback which will be fatal to the use of tips. This is 

 the effect on the action, and there may be a necessity for weight on 

 the posterior portion of the hoof to enable a horse to trot fast, and 

 the absence of the iron at the heel might induce a greater tendency 

 to shuffle or single-foot. Every trainer who has had much experience 

 with colts, knows the care which is requisite to keep them trotting 

 square, and how frequently, notwithstanding his efforts, they will 

 " get off their gait," and retrograde in speed. They will do so when 

 it will puzzle the most acute to give a satisfactory explanation, or de- 

 tect the cause of the change in the action. 



So far as my experiments have shown with the trotting colts, there 

 was no greater tendency to those hindrances to speed with tips than 

 with shoes, and those which I have instituted since writing the for- 

 mer articles have been with more of a desire to test this than anything 

 else. The result of my own trials were the only ones I had for data, 

 as there is such a violent prejudice with lior semen against innovations, 

 particularly when that change is an entirely different system of shoe- 

 ing, that the most enterprising were loth even to listen to arguments 

 in favor of the change. 



It is an easy matter to convince any person of ordinary intelligence 

 that the feet are benefited, when a comparison is instituted with 

 those which wear shoes, as tliat is too palpable to be contradicted. 

 Especially is the variation from the natural foot, which shoeing causes, 

 more notable when the animal has worn the ordinary shoe a suf- 

 ficient time to change the entire structure of the foot, for I am in- 

 clined to the belief that after a horse has been shod for a few years 

 the foot can never be brought back to its original form. The injui-ies 

 may be palliated, but never entirely overcome. 



But while this advantage to the foot is susceptible of demonstra- 

 tion, the bearing it has on other subjects of imjDortance is not so evi- 

 dent, and people are prone to ascribe difliculties which have arisen 

 from other causes to the new departure. I have been more anxious 

 to convince myself than others, and have watched as carefully, or 

 more so, for radical defects than for arguments to sustain it. In such 

 a case I would have been ready to give them publicity, as I have 

 no pride in sustaining a position once taken, if that position has not 



