667 
REVIEW. 
Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non. — Hon. 
Horse-Shoeing, as it is Done, and as it ought 
to be : a Letter addressed to the President and Members of 
the Saint John Agricultural Society . With Plates and 
Illustrations. By M. A. Cuming, V.S., Member of the 
Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons of Edinburgh and 
London. 1854. Pamphlet, 8vo, pp. 21. 
The present brochure consists of the publication of “ A 
Letter to the President and Members of the St. John Agri- 
cultural Society,’ 5 the origin of which, we are informed, was 
as follows : 
“ Gentlemen, — In addressing you on the particular point in the treat- 
ment of your horses placed at the head of this letter, I may be allowed to 
guard myself against the imputation of obtrusiveness, by referring to the 
following extract from the original application of the society, by which 1 was 
induced to come to this city and province. In writing to Professor Dick, of 
Edinburgh, to recommend a competent Veterinary Surgeon for St John, the 
corresponding secretary of your society said : — c It is greatly desired by the 
members of the society that the surgeon should have in connection with his 
establishment, or under his charge, a forge where horses could be shod in a 
proper manner. At present we are very badly off in this respect, there 
being but few smiths with whom a good horse can be safely trusted. 5 
“This was written in the summer of 1851, and my own observation after 
coming here in 1852, fully bore out the truth of the statement. It was 
not necessary to take off shoes, or examine feet, or enter into any other 
minute kind of inspection to find out the evil. The long donkey-like hoofs 
everywhere seen, and the number of horses lame from corns, contractions, 
ringbones, spavins, sprained tendons and interfering, were sufficient evidence 
that the society had not instructed its secretary to write as he did without 
abundant cause. 
“ Such being the case, there is nee,d for little further proof that the horses 
here are not generally shod as they should be, nor is it required that I 
should argue the benefits of a better system. The adage, £ no foot no 
horse, 5 is equally applicable here as where it was first used. In this 
country, where horses arc hard driven, and too light generally for their 
work, it is of the greatest importance that as few defects should exist in the 
plan of shoeing them, and as many advantages be combined as the state of 
the shoeing art will admit of, and it is to further this desirable end that the 
following remarks are meant. In writing my ideas, therefore, on horse 
shoeing, I have no wish that they should be looked upon as a complete or 
formal treatise on the subject. So many of these having already been pub- 
