PAEING AND BASPIN&. 89 



legitimate extent tte practices in question may be carried, the 

 reader may ascertain immediately. Common sense wiU tell 

 any man who wUl reflect upon the matter, that if the feet are 

 cut and rasped without judgment, and to a greater extent than 

 the horn is grown during the intervals of shoeing, the animal 

 will speedily become useless, from the want of protection to 

 the sensitive structures within the hoof; yet this is regularly 

 done by at least three-fourths of the farriers in the kingdom. 

 Hoofs of the best class, and those which grow most vigorously 

 only produce horn at little more than five-sixteenths of an 

 inch per month ; while bad hoofs, or those which are thin, 

 weak, and low at the heels and quarters, do not produce the 

 material so rapidly even as this. All that the farrier should 

 remove, are those loose cakes of horn attached to the sole, and 

 this is especially necessary in order to bed the shoe carefully 

 to the rim of the foot. A single cut vrith the drawing knife 

 beyond this, is productive more or less of injury. The frog, 

 unless diseased, should never be cut; the functions of this 

 organ being of too important a character to be interfered with 

 by ignorant or bungling attempts to improve upon its natural 

 formation. 



Immediately above the frog, are a number of structures 

 which in combination form two most important articulations, 

 viz., the Coffin and the Navicular Joints ; and the principal use 

 of the frog is to afibrd protection to the parts in question; 

 consequently to cut away this organ, or any portion of its 

 substance, is to remove the natural protection from these joints 

 and structures, and thereby imnecessarily expose them to injury. 

 We have no hesitation in saying that thousands of horses have 

 been rviined by the practice alluded to. My advice is, let the 

 TEOG AiiONE, With my own horses, I do not allow the smith 

 to cut away even the ragged portions which occasionally hang 



