SHOmNG. 253 



largely to the habitual use, during our long winter months, of needlessly 

 large calkins, only fractional parts of which find lodgment in the earth 

 or ice during the progression. When a horse is shod with the exagger- 

 ated calkins to which I have alluded, the toe and heel calks are, or ought 

 to be, the same height, to start with, at all events. Very often, how- 

 ever, they are not, and even when they are, the toe calk wears down on 

 animals used for draft purposes far more rapidly than its fellows at the 

 heel. The result is that the toe is depressed while the heel is unnatu- 

 rally raised. 



The relative position of the bony structures within the foot is altered, 

 and the navicular bone, which is not one of the weight-bearing bones, is 

 brought within the angle of incidence of both weight and concussion, 

 influences which it was never contemplated it should withstand, and 

 which its structure precludes its sustaining without injury. The bone 

 becomes first bruised and then diseased; the tendon, to which it was in- 

 tended it should act as a pulley, which passes over and is in constant 

 contact with it, before long also becomes implicated, and what is 

 technically known as navicular arthritis is thus engendered and de- 

 veloped. 



Shoeing for a Specific Purpose. Thanks to the amount of at- 

 tention which every detail that could possibly tend to the more perfect 

 development of that paragon of horseflesh, the American trotter, has re- 

 ceived at the hands of all classes of men, the matter of shoeing for specific 

 purposes has made greater progress in America than in any other country 

 on the face of the globe, and that is a department of the farrier's art 

 which is justly entitled the highest eulogium that can be bestowed 

 upon it. 



The different styles of shoes which have been devised are marvels of 

 ingenuity, and many of them are admirably effective as remedial agents 

 of faulty gaits and uneven action. Their number is infinite, but as, 

 many are applicable onlj', or in a large measure, to horses used for 

 speed purposes onlj^, any attempt at classification or detailed description 

 would be out of place in a work of this kind. When intelligently ap- 

 plied a considerable number are, however, potent auxiliaries in miti- 

 gating in some cases the results of natural defects of conformation 

 amongst animals whose lot is cast in the humbler if more useful fields of 

 horse enterprise. Among these are the scoop-toed or roller-motion shoe 

 for the fore-feet and the shoe for the hind-feet, which, while they obvi- 

 ate "forging" or "cHcking," a habit hurtful to the horse and singularly 



