FAULTY CONFORMATION 149 
complete covering to the sole and frog, and to the bearing 
surface of the wall. When cold it hardens, without losing 
the shape given to it, into a hard, leather-like substance. 
Treated in this way, the animal with pumiced feet may 
yet be capable of earning his living at light labour or upon 
a farm. 
E. ‘RINGED’ OR ‘RIBBED’ HOOF. 
Definition.—A condition of the hoof in which the wall is 
marked by a series of well-defined ridges in the horn, each 
ridge running parallel with the coronary margin. They 
Fic, 82.—Hoor sHuwING THE RinGs IN THE Horn BROUGHT ABOUT 
BY PHYSIOLOGICAL CAUSES. 
are known commonly as ‘ grass rings,’ and may be easily 
distinguished from the more grave condition we have 
alluded to as following laminitis, by the mere fact that 
they do not, as do the laminitic rings, approximate each 
other in the region of the toe, but that they run round the 
foot, as we have already said, parallel with each other. 
Causes.—This condition is purely a physiological, and 
not a pathological one, and the words of its more common 
name, ‘grass rings,’ sufficiently indicate one of the most 
common causes. Anything tending to an alternate increase 
and decrease in the secretion of horn from the coronet will 
