Report on the Hor.-ie-shoeing Competition at Nottingham. 651 
append, for their very careful attention to their duties, for the 
infinite pains taken to select the best men, and their evident 
desire to impress upon the candidates the necessity for improve- 
ment both theoretically and practically in their important 
calling. 
Report of the Jvdges of Horse-Shoeing. 
Class 1. Hunters. — When we considered that the district open to com- 
petitors this year embraced the hunting counties of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, 
Korthampton, Notts, and Rutland, we naturally expected to see a large per- 
centage of the work done in a skilful manner ; but in this we were much 
disappointed. 
Of the 48 competitors entered, 46 appeared. Before beginning work we 
addressed the whole of the men in both classes, with two or three excep- 
tions, and. cautioned them against a too tree use of the knife and rasp, also 
against burning the foot. As the horses to be shod varied considerably in 
size in Class 1, we particularly requested the competitors in that class to 
remember that they were supposed to be shoeing hunters, and that the shoes 
were to be adapted for that purpose, keeping carefully in view the character 
of the foot allotted to them for shoeing. We are confident that our remarks 
as to cutting, rasping, and burning the foot had a good effect, but we regret 
to say that little or no attention was given to the size of the horse or the 
An-acter of the foot, and although different sizes of iron were supplied only 
one ^a»e was used. Hence horses with large flat feet, that as hunters could 
have earned from 16 to 18 stones, were shod with shoes very much too light, 
and which ww«kl have been not only useless in actual work but positively 
injurious. One mare was the cause of our disqualifying three men, as 
each of these men made shoes wholly unfitted for the animal. In other 
cases little light horses withsaaall feet had too much iron to carry. 
The recorded time test was very bad : it varied from 39 to 88 minutas. 
This was largely attributable to the time consumed in filing and polishing 
the shoes — a process that was cai-ried out %o a ridiculous extent. The 
averasre time was 57 minutes. Only one competitor waslees than 40 minutes, 
ten from 40 to 50 minutes, seventeen from 50 to 60 minutes, and tbe remain- 
ing men exceeded one hour. We observed in many cases that the nail heads 
were rasped down when the shoe had been nailed on and "clenched" up. 
This ought not to be necessary, and is not so with really good workmen. 
Class 2. Agricultural Horses. — In this class the work done was far 
better than in Class 1, and we were pleased with the general result. Forty-five 
competitors entered, but two were absent. With few exceptions the work 
was really good — the shoes well-shaped, strong and sound, and adapted to 
the feet and description of work the horse was expected to do. 
The recorded time was a great improvement upon that in Class 1 . It 
varied from 25 to 57 minutes — the average being 31 minutes, which is too 
long for this sort of work. We think it only fair to mention that the first 
prize winner was a young man only 21 years of age. His work would have 
been a credit to any man — it was wonderfully good, especially under the 
disadvantage of the foot he had to shoe being the worst in the whole col- 
lection of horses. The winner of the second prize was also a young man, 
22 years of age, but his work was far l>ehind that of the first prizeman. 
At the close of each competition we examined the best workmen (25 in 
all, 14 in Class 1 and 11 in Class 2) as to their knowledge of the structure 
and uses of the various portions of the horse's foot. We found that very 
few indeed had any but a confused idea of this subject, and we may. 
