MOTIVES FOR SHOEING. 129 



from tliis healthful pressure, aided by dirt, will as quickly result iu 

 its shrivelled proportions; and even, indeed, in its absolute disap- 

 pearance — when, of course, contracted heels are also an inevitable 

 consequence. These evils, however, as we have seen, cannot fall to 

 the lot of the typical colt, when at lai'ge on his pasturage ; although 

 they may, and do, happen to him also when kept for any length of 

 time in a dirty straw-yard, and thus deprived of his natural contact 

 with his own mother earth. 



What, then, are our motives, it may be asked, in applying shoes 

 at all where the typical colt is thus seen to go as daintily and gi'ace- 

 fully unshod as do the peasant girls of the south and west of Ireland, 

 and also in ma.ny other (for the present, at least) haj^pier countries 

 familiar to many of us 1 The answer is quickly given — that the 

 colt's earlier career does not require that he should pei-form rapid 

 pilgrimages on roads strewed with sharply angular and artificially 

 broken stones, which would otherwise risk the occurrence of either 

 of two kinds of injury— the one being the breaking away, splitting 

 or tearing of the outside, insensitive, protecting wall of the foot, and 

 exposui'e of the inside sensitive wall or " laminae," as might be exem- 

 plified by the breaking of one of our own finger-nails to the quick ; 

 the other injury to which he would be liable being caused by the 

 descent of his foot with force upon one of such sharp stones, and the 

 consequent bruising of the underlying sensitive sole, the outside in- 

 sensitively protecting sole having proved itself an insufiicient shield 

 for its protection against so unnatural an assailant. 



In answer to the question of how the colt is to be protected from 

 either or both of these misfortunes — both, as we have seen, proceed- 

 ing from dissimilar causes — I i^eply that the remedy will depend upon 

 the position in life it is intended that he shall occupy. If to race, 

 hunt, or, in a word, to " carry a saddle," then I unhesitatingly say, 

 by shoeing him on the Charlier system — a narrow rim or moulding 

 of steel protecting the insensitive outside crust and maintaining its 

 semi-circular formation intact as well as a clumsy appendage of iron, 

 and without its manifest disadvantages ; and, as he will be free to 

 choose his own ground when traveling by I'oad, he requires no pro- 

 tection from the second kind of injury already referred to. If, on 



