90 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
Equal mechanical skill has been exerted in an- 
other direction. Many horses cannot be driven at 
anything like their highest speed without danger 
of cutting themselves, by striking one foot or leg 
against another, especially when they “break”; and 
to protect them from injury in this manner a great 
variety of “boots” have been invented. Counting dif- 
ferent sizes of these articles separately, the number 
of them now on sale is over two hundred. Very few 
trotters are able to dispense with boots entirely, and 
many of them could not be used as race horses at all 
except for these appliances. The shoeing of trotting 
horses, again, is an art in itself,! and so is the use of 
toe-weights, which are small pieces of brass screwed 
or otherwise attached to the hoofs of the fore feet. 
Heavy shoes and toe-weights are employed to make 
horses trot who otherwise would pace, to keep them 
level in their gait, and sometimes to cause a length- 
ening of their stride. The difficulty and importance 
of these matters may be gathered from the fact that 
a change of no more than two ounces in a trotter’s 
fore shoes or toe-weights would, in many cases, make 
a difference of several seconds in his speed for a 
mile, and consequently of thousands of dollars in his 
value as arace horse. The necessity for toe-weights 
or heavy shoes lies in some defect of conformation 
or of gait, and when a trotter is obliged to carry a 
heavy load in this manner his feet and legs suffer. 
1 A fast horse now on the track is shod as follows: a sixteen- 
ounce shoe on the off fore foot, and a fourteen and a half ounce 
shoe on the near one; a shoe of eight ounces on the off hind foot, 
and one of six ounces on the near hind foot. Jack, to take another 
instance, wore only light tips on his fore feet when he made his 
record of 2.124. 
