124 HORSES: 



are as nature made them. In the words of " Free 

 Lance," " the unshod horse can successfully deal with 

 all roads "; and assuredly no one will dream of 

 asserting that shod horses can do this, for on the 

 setting in of frost, for instance, they can not be 

 worked until certain ceremonies have been gone 

 through at the blacksmith's forge. The unshod horse 

 can tread firmly on the slime of wood pavement 

 when shod horses are slipping and struggling in agony 

 around them ; he can gallop on ice, and trot for miles 

 together on the hardest and roughest flint roads, with 

 far more ease and comfort than horses whose feet are 

 shod with iron, or even with gutta-percha. " Free 

 Lance " rightly remarks that " if they could not, there 

 would be an end of the thing, for evidently the horse 

 should be able to go anywhere and everywhere, and 

 at a moment's notice." It seems hard to produce 

 the conviction that the natural sole of the horse's 

 foot is almost impenetrable, that it is so hard and 

 strong as to protect the sensible sole from all harm, 

 and that all feet exposed to hard objects are made 

 harder by the contact, provided only that the sole is - 

 never pared. This adequacy of the horse's foot to 

 all demands that may be made upon it is forcibly 

 illustrated by Mr. Bracy Clark, who, like Mr. Douglas 

 and Mr. Mayhew, contented himself with striving to 

 produce a perfect shoe, although he acknowledged 

 that if we wish to appreciate the full beauty of its 

 structure, "we must dismiss from our views the 

 miserable, coerced, shod foot entirely and consider 

 the animal in a pure state of nature using his foot 



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