REMARKS ON MR. REEVE’S EXPERIMENTS. 
139 
upper. I am sure that, with so near an approach to a similarity 
of ideas as expressed by the drawing of Mr. Reeve’s ordinary 
shoe, this paper has only been a war of words, and that Mr. Reeve 
ought to have been with me, instead of being against me. 
I must now make a few remarks on the “ Editorial Article.” 
Knowing that Mr. Percivall has always held a different opinion to 
what I do on the action of the horse’s foot, and as, on the publi- 
cation of my experiments, he expressed his dissent, I cannot feel 
surprise that, with Mr. Reeve’s paper before him, he should have 
considered it good confirmatory evidence of the soundness of his 
own views of the physiology of the horse’s foot. On a subject 
so confessedly difficult as this, and upon the study of which so 
much time has been spent, it is not surprising that a difference of 
opinion should arise. I am sorry, on the present occasion, 1 
cannot agree with the talented Editor of The VETERINARIAN. 
Mr. Percivall does not enter into the consideration of the subject 
as an argument, but merely remarks one fact which fell in his 
way, which would lead to a different conclusion to that which 
I have arrived at; and which was, that, when he was making 
experiments with the horse-sandal, he found that if, instead of its 
being constructed as it now is, as a frog-bar, it were made of the 
shape of an ordinary shoe, about the substance of a racing-plate 
(with the rings, I suppose he means, at the heels or quarters), and 
thus strapped on the foot, that as soon as the horse was put into 
a brisk or forcible trot the shoe would be cast off; and if it were 
then examined, it would be found to have undergone sensible 
dilatation at the heels and quarters, a circumstance accounting for 
the shoe having been thrown off. I have only to remark to this, 
that although, on first consideration, this fact might readily convey 
the idea that lateral expansion of the foot was the cause of the 
widening of the shoe, yet that I should be more inclined to place 
the effect to other causes, such as the shoe having no nails to resist 
the tendency to be carried towards a wide part of the foot, and 
hence, from its thinness, becoming wider. We know practically, 
when a horse’s shoe becomes much worn and thin at the toe, 
that in the process of wear, and from the shoe being carried for- 
ward, it will become very sensibly wider at the heels. The tread 
of the horse may have much to do with it. How very few horses 
tread perfectly level and flat ! The slightest twist of the horse’s 
foot on the ground might produce it, if we only take into consider- 
ation the weight and momentum of the horse acting on the thin 
racing-plate, one side of which was the opposing surface. Other 
causes would be in operation; such as the straps coming from the 
shoe over each heel, thus causing the natural bulging out of the 
heels, at each tread of the horse, to have a tendency to pull 
