SHOBING. 247 



angle should conform exactly to the inclination of the limb. It would 

 be misleading to lay down any arbitrary degree of obliquity. The angle 

 differs in different cases; and the natural bias of the superimposed struc- 

 tures is the only safe guide to follow. More than one instrument has 

 been devised for ascertaining the correct degree of obliquity, some of 

 them simple and efficacious; but an inspection of the foot in profile is 

 usually the best way of deciding. Too much importance can not possibly 

 be attached by the workman to this and the succeeding step, namely, 

 leveling the ground surface of the foot, as the slightest departure from 

 exactitude here renders whatever amount of care he may devote to the 

 completion of his work worse than useless. The very smallest deviations 

 from the perpendicular causes diastrous consequences not only on the 

 foot but on the entire limb. In the foot itself, when the weight is borne 

 unevenly, the lowest parts receive an undue share; the pressure re- 

 tards the growth of new horn, and the foot in consequence becomes 

 weakened, distorted, and deformed. 



The Shoe. The shoe should be as light as the weight of the animal 

 and the nature of the work he is expected to perform will admit. 

 Heavy shoes not only burden the animal which is condemned 

 to wear them, for there is truth in the old adage, "an ounce at the toe 

 means a pound at the withers;" but they also increase the concussion 

 inseparable from progression, so even in the trotter, whose work is meted 

 out to him with judicious care, although the weight doubtless accom- 

 plishes the work for which it was intended, it is a draft at usury on 

 the horse's future soundness, which that animal is bound to take up at 

 maturity. 



The legitimate mission of the shoe is to prevent undue wear of the 

 walls, and a light shoe will do this quite well as a heavy one; it is more- 

 over entirely erroneous to suppose that a heavy shoe necessarily wears 

 longer than a light one, as experience proves the contrary, in many in^ 

 stances, to be the case. Even among our mammoth draft horses, whose 

 shoes must of course be made with reference to the weight they have to 

 bear and the inordinate strain to which they are subjected when the 

 animal which wears them is at work, I am not prepared to admit that it 

 is by any means necessary to add to the concussion to which his feet are 

 unavoidably subjected, by several pounds of unyielding iron on each 

 foot, when shoes weighing half as much would serve the purpose equally 

 well. The lamentably short career of our city draft horse, which is 

 usually determined by foot lameness of one kind or another, is largely 



