655 
REVIEW. 
Quid sit piilchrum, quid turpc, quid utile, quid non. — IIor. 
RODWAY’S PATENT HORSESHOE. 
It has been our desire all along to defer giving any opinion of 
the production before us until sufficient time had been allowed 
to put it to trial in every way in our power; but, as with every 
thing new, it has prematurely got such a name with the public, 
and become such an engrossing topic of conversation and in- 
quiry among veterinary and horse people, that we feel it a duty 
we owe to our good readers to give them some account of it — 
the best we can from the incomplete experience we have had — 
in the present number of our Journal. 
It is now some years since public attention has been drawn to 
any novelty in the form or fashion of our horseshoes. In years 
gone by, we had inventions and discoveries enow to satisfy any 
thirst after innovation: the names of Moorcroft, Rotch, Cole- 
man, Hodgson, Goodwin, and Percivall, as patentees of horse- 
shoes, are still rife in the memories of many of us; to make no 
mention ofinventors and discoverers in this line who, more humble 
in their pretensions and wiser in their generation, sought for no 
patent protection of their “ discoveries.” We say wiser, because 
we apprehend that patented horseshoes have turned out to their 
proprietors any thing but “ winning games:” we have never yet 
heard of any person having made a fortune by a horseshoe ; but 
we have known those who have lost by such a speculation, 
money, and labour, and time, to a greater amount than it would 
be either pleasant for them to recollect or for us to remind them 
of. 
Most of the by-gone patents came into the world with strong 
pretensions to public notice : they were, quite in a formal manner, 
introduced by prospectuses, rich in promise, and holding out all 
sorts of advantages ; nor can that by which Mr. Rod way has 
ushered in his production be said, in this respect, to be much, if 
any, behind those that have preceded it. 
Mr. Rodway’s patent consists in a horseshoe of the same 
form as the common shoe ; but which, instead of being fullered 
in the ordinary way, has a groove — a “ concavity,” as he calls it — 
extending around it, through both heels, upon its ground-surface, 
about three-fourths of the breadth of which it occupies, the re- 
