THEIR FEED AND THEIR FEET. 



127 



marks, holds that the floor of a stable should be made, 

 not of soft wood, but of solid hard oak, which will 

 make the foot of the horse as hard as a rock. It 

 should surely be unnecessary to say that these writers 

 make not the remotest reference or allusion to the 

 shoeing of horses. It was impossible that they could 

 notice a practice which was unknown to the ancient 

 world, and which is in truth simply a modern, as it 

 is also a most uncalled for, barbarism. No iron helped 

 to produce the heavy sound of solid horn which Virgil 

 ascribes to the fiery steed of Pollux. Of late years 

 we have heard much of the unjustifiable waste of 

 time spent on classical literature which has no practi- 

 cal bearing on the interests of modern life. It is un- 

 fortunate that Xenophon's treatise on the manage- 

 ment of horses has not formed one of the subjects for 

 the upper forms of our public schools ; and it would 

 be well if they were made to read with care a book 

 written by one who wrote unfettered by the restraints 

 of any traditional system, and who successfully 

 brought the cavalry as well as the infantry of the Syrian 

 army of Greeks from the plains of Babylon to the shores 

 of the Euxine. There they would see how thoroughly 

 the rules laid down by the leader of the Ten Thou- 

 sand for the selection and the management of horses 

 are in accordance with the highest scientific knowl- 

 edge of the present day, and how happy an ignorance 

 he displays of the long and dismal catalogue of 

 diseases and miseries which a wrong-headed and 

 ridiculous system has called into existence. No 

 horses could be subjected to a more severe strain in 



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