26 



went tolfrahly well, and I kept on vvith her tili we reached Hungerford, 

 often dismounting- and Walking by her side, for her own as well as my 

 relief. I remained at Hungerford the night, and examined particularly 

 the State of her feet : the wall was beconie extremely short at the wearing 

 line, tliat the sole at that place must havetaken the chief pressure. It was 

 in observing thisfact, that the wearing line sußered very disproportionately 

 to the other parts of the foot, (which froni niere dead pressure did not wear 

 away so fast,) that I was led to apprehend a defence of this line could 

 be resorted to without the use of nails, whicli would double or treble the use 

 of the lioof, and enable many to have the gcntle exercise that health or 

 amusement only required, and save their horses the persecution which the 

 common method entails, by useing a kind of steel ferril, which could be 

 heldon by embracing the wallon the inside as well as the out and which being 

 a totally different principle from the shoe, I termed the Paratrite, 

 which I shall describe more particularly hereafter. 



After washing her feet in cold water to cool and harden them, I left her 

 for the night, and the next morning early, tried her on the road, and found 

 her to go better than on the preceding evening; the weather was become 

 fine, and the roads drier. I reached Froxfield to breakfast, and with soine 

 difEculty and great attention to her road got to Marlborough, and thence 

 to Calne to dinner, where, as the hörn was now become very thin, and 

 the casual pressure of a stone might injure, or perhaps fracture, the coffin- 

 bone, I thought it niost prudent to desist from farther pressing the expe- 

 ritnent. On the Downs, however, she gallopped on the sward without 

 inconvenience, or any particular expression of feeling; no doubt, from the 

 general bearing which the foot would here take upon the soft carpet of the 

 herbage, and the abscence of stones from contact with the wearing line. 



I left her at Calne and proceeded to Bath, now only nineteen miles from 

 me, by the coach; so that she had performed eighty-eight miles witii un- 

 protected hoofs. After three days I returned, and bronght her with me to 

 Bath, and used her there for some weeks in various little excursions. 



It will be seen therefore that the hoof of the horse even at four years 

 old is not so poor a defence as many imagine ; for many stable men and 

 nmiths are almost frighted at the idea of going from house to house with- 

 out shoes. Yet, although the natural hoof will do much, it is also a truth, 

 that to obtain the füll Services of the horse, and all the labour which the 

 strength of his body permits him to give, his hoofs are insufficient without 



