84 TIPS AND TOE-WEIGHTS. 



The first gallop of a mile I gave two of my horses, on the Oakland 

 course, resulted in injuries which incapacitated one entirely; the other 

 ran raany races, but with his feet so shattered that his capacity was 

 so much curtailed that he could only display a small portion of his 

 real powers. The first was a three-year-old filly, and in a match at 

 Chicago, when a year younger, she easily defeated a sister to Ella 

 Rowett, and would, doubtless, have made a fine race mare. The 

 other was Hock-Hocking. The filly broke oS" a wing of the coffin 

 bone from the concussion, consequent on the jar of the hard track 

 and still harder shoe, and the splitting of the fibres of the horn was 

 due to the same cause. As has been described and illusti'ated in a 

 previous chapter, I invented and tested a shoe which was something 

 of a safeguard, viz : Two plates with a stratum of rubber between. 

 This was a step in the right direction, and while laboring to make it 

 still more efiective, by increasing the width of the heel, covering the 

 whole space between the frog and the outside of the wall, so as to 

 use more of the elastic substance where the whole of the concussion 

 came, it struck me that there was a natural safeguard which would 

 do away with the necessity of artificial appliances. 



This safeguard is the highly elastic frog, when in a natural state, 

 the spring which the commissures permit, and the dilatation and con- 

 traction in the coronary region. Taking the hoof of a colt which 

 had never been shod, between my knees, gi-asping the wall with my 

 fingers, and the thumbs pressing on the posterior part of the bars, I 

 found that it yielded readily, and the amount of motion thei*e 

 was. Contrasting this with the shod foot, the difterence was so great 

 that I thought it must arise from some peculiarity in the individual, 

 and that the colt had a more pliant wall than usual, but repeated ex- 

 periments on vai-ious animals convinced me that this was one of the 

 wise provisions to guard against injuiy which nature gives, and for 

 remedying the disadvantages of the one toe in the modern cahallus 

 was an admirable contrivance. All other animals, with the excep- 

 tion of the hoi'se, £(,ss, zebra, quagga, etc., have divided hoofs, or 

 padded heels, like the camel, or curved toes like the greyhound, and 

 the guards against concussion when in rapid progression are ample. 

 The rigid bar of ii'on not only fetters the motion which the commis- 



