OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH HORSES. 513 
it be traced to the firmer and more even, or, rather, peculiar tread, 
afforded by the French shoe. 
I have just examined the position and nailing of the fore shoe 
of a four-year-old horse now in my stable, and the following is the 
best description I can give of it. Across the widest part it is four 
inches and a half, and at the narrowest (the heel) it is three and a 
half. There are eight nails in each shoe, none within two inches of 
the heel on the outer side of the foot, or within two inches and a 
half on the inner, and no one nail comes out more than an inch 
from the bottom of the hoof. The ground surface is quite flat ; a 
parallel plane, indeed ; the inner one, to a certain extent, seated. 
From the length of the shoe, which from toe to heel is four inches 
and a half, with the heel resting upon it, it is evident there is no 
want of sufficient pressure at the posterior parts of the foot, which 
is said to produce disease ; and the cause of the evil, from driving 
the nails so far backward as to render (as it is said to do), both 
the crust and horny sole fixtures, as well as to prevent the descent 
of the navicular bone, does not here exist. 
I now take my leave of the foot, with only this observation. 
As we hear so much of foot-lameness in Great Britain and America, 
and so little of it in France, is it not reasonable to suppose that, if 
the difference in shoeing, in addition to the difference of pace, has 
any thing to do with it, the cause, as relates to this difference, is 
well worthy of consideration ? What I now assert detracts nothing 
from my former assertions — that, shod how they may be, and not 
shod at all, feet will go wrong, exhibiting all the diseases and deform- 
ities to which they are subject; that fact having been too clearly 
proved by the wretched state of several seen by Mr. Tattersall and 
myself, in Germany and Prussia, to which shoes, buttresses and 
drawing-knives had never been applied. For my own part, were I 
to become proprietor of a large stud of horses in England, not 
hunters or race horses, the first thing I should do, would be to 
import a good French shoeing smith. 
Now I have often asked myself this question ? Had any one 
said to me, only ten years back, “ What do you think of good 
wheaten straw for stable purposes ?” what answer should I have 
made? I should have replied, -“It is the best of all other sorts 
for bedding down horses, because it is the cleanest and most free 
from dust and weeds ; and I have no objection to see my horses 
pick some of it when it is first put under them.” Then, suppose 
another had said, “ What do you think of it as an article of food 
for horses? do you think you could bring a race-horse to the post 
in fit condition to run, on wheaten strawn and corn ?” my answer 
would have been, “ In all my own experience in the keeping of 
