23 



good repair; and the hoofs on such a pavement must havc had an extra* 

 ordinary sound, which I apprt-hend sviggested very natiirally to them 

 the epitliet, Sonipes, for the Horse, so much used by their poets,* and of 

 whicli >ur present roads made of loose stones and gravel, can afford us 

 no adequate idea. 



That it should not longer remain, matter of conjecture merely, what a 

 horse could perform with his hoofs unprotected on our ordinary roads, 

 I made numerous experiments with different horses at first with feet that 

 had been shod, mistaking- them for natural feet when their shoes were 

 taken off, as always had heretofore been donc; but frnding them soon 

 become tender, not from wear so much as from expansion, having been 

 so long locked up and changed by the iron, which we have more fuUy 

 explained in another part of this work : I therefore procured for the 

 experiment a young horse at three years old, that had never been shod 

 and kept it tili four, when I made the following experiment, which I 

 copy from minutes made in the course of the journey. 



Ninth of the sixth month (June) 1811, I left London in the evening, 

 for Bath, and rode this young mare without any defence to her feet as 

 far as Brentford that night; the roads were in most places a very 

 deluge of niud, ahnost fetlock deep, from rains which had fallen several 

 days preceding; she camed me a brisk trot the whole way. 



The next morning I left my late esteemed friend James Kidd's house, 

 about eleven o'clock, having first examined the state of her feet and found 

 them not much worn, and that principally at the toe, or wearing line, the 

 heels not having suffered hardly at all. 



With a view to prevent the wet from getting into the hörn so easily. 

 as the roads were very dirty, I covered the under surface of the wall and 

 sole with bees Max, melting it in by the application of a woman's ironing 

 iron, as a Substitute or Imitation of the bituminous Compound, which the 

 ancients appear to have used for the same purpose, and which they called 



* Insiillans sonipes, ot prcssis jnigTiiit liabciiis. /Kntid. Lib. XI. 1. 600. 



Quo sonipet ic(u fciril ardutis, JEneid, Lib. XI. I. 638. 



Intemlctl as a coiilrast to llic .nbovc sound is, |>erhaps tlie following plirasc — " cavatijue" 

 "TtUurem, et solido graviier tonat nngitia cunm." Georg. Lib. 3. v. 86. At first this would appear 

 .ibsiird that thcre shouhi be any souiid at all on soft grouiid, wliicb tlic foot conld excavatc ; but Oh 

 Inrf, and at pretty füll spccd, llirrc i» lieard a heavy obtusc pounding sound, «hjch i» wliat Ihe poct 

 I apprelicnd wonld wisli to bring to our iinagination. 



U 



