LAMENESS IN HORSES. 
489 
hoofs, the feet begin to undergo more or less alteration in form, 
and in too many instances to experience harm from their appli- 
cation. The art of shoeing has given rise to a wonderful deal 
of difference of opinion and controversy, some thinking one 
shape of shoe answered best, some another ; while some prefer 
one mode of nailing it upon the hoof, others a different one. As 
far as my own experience has served as a guide to me through 
this labyrinth of opinion, I have ever found that method of 
shoeing the preferable one which approached the nearest to 
nature, or, in other words, which interfered the least with the 
economy of the foot. If we could do without them, horseshoes 
would, undoubtedly, be best abolished altogether ; but, since this 
is impracticable, let us adopt such shoes and modes of attaching 
them to the hoofs as are found to work the least mischief to the 
feet. On this principle it is that a half-shoe is to be preferred 
to a whole shoe, and for the same reason it is that tips, of all the 
horseshoes that were ever invented, are the best, i. e., the least 
objectionable. If those in the profession would come forward 
and inform us of their experience — if they have had any — of 
tip-shoeing, I believe it would uniformly be found, that what- 
ever objections might be urged against the use of tips, no one 
would deny their tendency the least to interfere with the opera- 
tions of the foot. If there be any horseshoe calculated to pre- 
vent contraction, and navicularthritis as well, I feel no hesita- 
tion myself in pronouncing that horseshoe to be the tip. In 
saying so much, I am fully aware that tip-shoeing cannot be 
introduced into general practice for reason of the roads horses 
have to travel and work upon, and of the numbers of horses 
having hoofs of too weak and brittle a fibre to stand work 
without chipping and breaking and wearing too rapidly away : 
on horses, however, whose hoofs are strong and hard enough, and 
whose work is light enough, to admit of their wearing tips for 
any length of time, or in situations where the roads or parts of 
the country they have to do their work upon enable them to 
wear tips constantly, no wholly shod horses’ feet will ever bear a 
comparison with theirs. 
PRESSURE TO THE Frog — Coleman’s favourite prophylactic 
against contraction — considering shoeing to be an indispensable 
evil, must certainly be regarded as next in importance, as a pre- 
ventive, to getting quit of the shoe itself, or of part of it. The 
frog being a body which in action operates in the expansion of 
the hoof, the removal of it, or even the impairment of it, must 
necessarily give facility to contraction. It therefore behoves us, 
in ordinary shoeing, to look well to the preservation of the in- 
tegrity of this important part of the foot. 
The Cutting away of the Bars in shoeing, through rob- 
vol. xxiv. 3 x 
