REVIEWS. 
131 
circumstances, made use of some sort of shoe. During the 
second period it was that horseshoes were nailed to the foot, 
dating from the invasion of the south of Europe by the 
barbarous tribes of the North. Rey’s third epoch compre- 
hends the later ages by whom the horseshoe has been 
brought to its present state of perfection. Bourgelat and 
Lafosse thought that the Greeks were acquainted with the 
art of shoeing horses, the former citing a passage from the 
Iliad in support of his opinion. The probability seems, how- 
ever, that when Homer made use of the expression x«^x 07roy S 
brass-hoofed , he meant to say their feet possessed the hardness 
of brass. As Bracy Clark, with reason, says, f had he meant 
otherwise he would, no doubt, have written hoofs furnished 
withy or armed with, brass, not feet of brass. 9 Besides which, 
had the Greeks been acquainted with shoeing, they would, as, 
they did all other arts, have brought it to perfection. And, 
moreover, Xenophon, one of the earliest writers on the 
education of the horse, makes no mention of shoeing, though 
he speaks of horses wearing shoes on long journeys, re- 
sembling those of the soldiers, which they called e/u/3arat, a 
kind of felt-boot. This historian wrote five hundred years 
before Christ. The Romans, the same as the Greeks, knew 
nothing of shoeing, though they had boots or sandals for 
occasional use. Neither Columella nor Yegelius make any 
mention of any other shoe than the sparcia f a sort of broom 
or rush-boot/ 5 
According to Bracy Clark, to whose work we now turn, 
shoeing c was probably brought into use first by some of the 
barbarous nations which overran that (the Roman) empire. 
The earliest nailed shoe of which there is any record was 
found at Tournay, in Flanders, buried along with him in the 
coffin of Childaric, king of France, who died in 481; and 
Montfaucus, in his c Antiquities/ states that this shoe was 
with the nail-holes in it, and that it fell to pieces on being 
handled.’* The first clear and positive intimation of the 
modern shoe, at present known, is in the ninth century, in 
* ‘ Essay on the Knowledge of the Ancients respecting the Art of Shoeing 
the Horse/ &c. 
