EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
117 
stance accounting for the shoe having been thrown off. Should 
the shoe have been measured prior to its being put on, remeasure- 
ment of it as soon as cast will give some estimate of the amount 
of expansion the hoof has undergone during action, which will be 
found greater than might be anticipated. 
Coupled with the fact of expansion in the unfettered because 
un-nailed hoof, Mr. Reeve’s experiments are valuable, not only 
from the circumstance of their demonstrating that expansion like- 
wise takes place in the foot shod in the ordinary way, and that 
with the expansion the sole descends ; but also because they in- 
form us of the ratio of expansion and descent at the different parts 
of the wall and sole of the hoof. Coleman’s happy illustration of 
the descent of the sole of the hoof consisted in placing the shoe as 
close as possible upon it without actually touching it, and proving 
that such would lame a horse in consequence of the sole descending 
and striking against it. Mr. Reeve, by ingeniously contriving to 
oppose a sort of inverted “ harrow,” full of small spikes, to the 
surface of the sole, demonstrates the same movement, with the 
farther useful practical facts, that the descent of the sole is greatest 
around the sides and point of the frog, least across the toe and at 
the heels. And by the application, sideways, of a similar spiked 
iron plate to the outer wall of the hoof, he has contrived to estab- 
lish the fact of expansion, and the degree to which such takes 
place in different situations : expansion being shewn to be greatest 
at the quarters and heels, least at parts anterior and superior to 
them. 
Repeating here what we said in The VETERINARIAN in July 
1849, in reference to the declination of the heels of the foot — for 
inviting our attention specially to which we are indebted to Mr. 
Gloag — we find that the shoe remains “a fixed point” in such 
movement ; consequently, “ the moving body must be the hoof,” 
the fibres of which, Mr. Reeve pertinently observes, must, there- 
fore, under such circumstances, actually “ bend.” The curious fact 
to which Mr. Gloag called our attention, of one hoof being found 
to decline to a less degree at the heels whenever the heels of the 
opposite hoof were made fixtures by wedges, being probably ex- 
plicable on the supposition that, under such circumstances, the 
action of the limbs and bearing of the feet become altered : the 
unwedged foot, through sympathy, partaking of this in common 
with the wedged one. 
Mr. Gamgee, at his early years, with his short experience in 
professional matters, has taken rather a bold step to remonstrate 
with heads so much older, and it might be presumed so much 
wiser, than his own, on topics of so grave a character as the educa- 
tion and qualification of the veterinary surgeon ; and yet, we will 
take upon ourselves to assure him, neither examiners nor professors 
VOL. XXIII. R 
