MANUFACTURE OF HORSE-SHOES. 
493 
artistic forms in common use from which iron ones are cast 
being, in the first instance, expensive : yet, I believe, from 
experience, there is sufficient margin left for profit to any 
founder and steel manufacturer to undertake it : extensive 
production would repay it. 
Veterinary surgeons should not, in my opinion, withdraw 
from their places any more than we would expect mechanical 
engineers to do so : they are the artists who should endeavour, 
by improving the art of the ordinary artisan, where they have 
an opportunity of doing so; and machine-made and cast- 
cemented shoes offer not only facilities of producing artistic 
shoes of any form, but incalculable advantages, commercially 
considered. While we retain the unartistic ideas, “ habits , or 
work, or forms of our ancestors — the farriers f we shall never 
improve either the manufacture of horse-shoes for common 
use, or the artisan who applies these, who should know how 
to vary this, with different horses, and their uses. 
Should the extracts and what I have written fail to con- 
vince, I recommend the reader to refer himself to the able 
Report of the Jury of Class xxn, part of which only I have 
thus, perhaps, but imperfectly given, solely with the view of 
showing how referable that Report is, in regard to the 
manufacture of horse- shoes, and the advancement of that 
branch of veterinary art, the fitting to the feet. If in utilizing 
either to suit the wants of the public in every-day life, or the 
exigencies of an army, either at home or on foreign service, 
we cannot carry out, in many cases, practices founded on the 
physiology of the foot, i. e. a concave ground surface, instead 
of the redundancy of a flat one, or the still more exuberant 
convex one of common English and French farriery, it is 
indeed to be regretted, as well for the horses as their owners 
and riders. 
p. s. The foregoing remarks on cast-cemented shoes were 
written before p. 357 of this Journal was read. So far from 
such opposition detracting from the merit of this invention, 
it only enhanced it. Sooner or later, it will, notwithstanding, 
come into use; for, as the Jury Report states , — “ If, then, the 
due adjustment of the mechanical and the artistic elements of 
perfection in manufacture, is a problem yet to be solved in this 
country, it is because the point of progress has not yet been 
reached at which its solution becomes possible; if that solution 
has been postponed beyond what may appear a reasonable 
period, it is because the mechanical element, bringing with it 
new and unheard-of advantages, commercial and utilitarian, 
has been borne along on an overwhelming tide of success, and 
