EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
235 
feel quite sure, these remarks will not create the slightest 
feeling of an unfriendly nature among our friends whom 
they concern ; since they, after all, were but passive agents 
in the business. 
This, however, is but a small matter when compared with 
the horse-shoe which the Committee have inflicted on the 
regiments. There are veterinary surgeons in the cavalry of 
many years’ standing, who, from a love, and even an enthu- 
siasm, for shoeing, have cogitated and manipulated this matter 
over and over again, in order to make sure of arriving at the 
shoe best adapted, in their opinion, to the requirements of 
the service ; and, after years of reflection and toil, they have, 
in their own minds, hit upon that shoe : and now, for these 
men to be told, that the shoe they have fixed upon is to be 
cast aside for one of the commonest and most objectionable 
description, is, to say the least of it, mortifying in the extreme. 
The sole advantage gained by such an introduction is uni- 
formity ; while the disadvantages it brings with it are several 
and serious. 
From what has been said, it might, and with good reason, 
be argued, that, had a committee of regimental veterinary 
surgeons, having all their own, and most probably different, 
opinions on shoeing, been appointed, they would never have 
come to any agreement among themselves as to which was 
the best or most proper shoe. As far as we are acquainted, 
however, with the various methods of shoeing practised by the 
army veterinarians, the shoes all admit, — with the single 
exception of the old-fashioned shoe, now adopted, — of recon- 
cilement — in other words, of being amalgamated into one 
improved, safe, and uniform system of shoeing. With regard 
to the concave shoe, and the placing it upon the unpared 
sole, all the old army veterinarians are agreed ; they differ 
only on the one point of turning the shoe up at the toe — 
rocking-horse fashion — as the French do. 
If it be asked how such a change, — novel and strange 
perhaps as it may be to some regiments, — was to be brought 
about, so as to establish uniformity among the whole of the 
cavalry, we would reply, “ Let so many regiments who 
already understand the plan be made model regiments ; and 
