REGISTRY OF CAVALRY HORSES* SHOES. 21 
shoe, and, if I had not had the size, I might have looked in vain, 
in the midst of a jangle, for a forge; the utility of which at 
other times, with heavy horses, I do not intend to write against 
or dispute. 
The advantage of Registry even in the forge is this : Sup- 
posing a gentleman to have an adult favourite horse. Out with 
the hounds, he loses a shoe ; unfortunately he is without a patent 
sandal ; the crust is broken a great deal. His owner desires to 
meet the hounds next day, and the horse is shod : instead of going 
freely as before, he is a patterer, from being closely shod. Now, 
had the owner the register of the old lost shoe on a piece of 
paper which had been well fitted, and he were to apply the 
register of the new shoe, he immediately could detect that fre- 
quently the smith is the cause of those changes in adult horses’ 
feet pointed out in Mr. B. Clark’s experiments on horses, 
for a series of years, by the too great counter-pressure of nails, 
and which the knowledge of the natural size of the horse’s foot 
by registering effectually prevents. 
It is no matter whether the system of measurement had re- 
course to, is straw, twine, or the French podometer; the princi- 
ple is not affected either by the hot or cold system of shoeing. 
Registry of size “ protects the horse at once from the accidents 
he is liable to in the forge.” Urgent necessity only should 
oblige the smith to depart from it; and, when the occasional 
cause of breaking the hoof does so, he should return to the 
original-sized shoe as early as growth of horn admits of it, to 
relieve the sensitive foot from the before- mentioned unavoidable 
counter-pressure, “ and to the ill consequences of shoeing then 
practised.” 
My system of measuring the coronet for a scale, and making 
the fore shoe an ellipsis of this circle, is grounded on thus ascer- 
taining knowledge of the extent of the sensible foot. The form 
of the hind-foot shoe being “ the geometrician’s oval, is a figure 
resembling an egg, round, but oblong, and, when laid down upon 
paper, is narrower at one end than the other ; whereas the ellip- 
sis is equally broad at both ends.” 
I took out a patent for this method of measurement in 1824, 
but, having returned to India, I could not follow it up. I was, 
nevertheless, convinced of the practical utility of registering the 
sizes of adult horses’ feet, to subsequently ascertain if any 
change had happened in their form, the causes, & c. I do not know 
what kind of instrument the podometer is, but, from description, 
I believe it measures the inferior surface or lower edge of the 
crust : the reversing of the shoe for the near or off-feet is dis- 
tinctly shewn in the plates of my work on shoeing; but I can- 
not take credit for this, the object being to leave as much 
