10 ON CORNS, AND THE MANAGEMENT OF 
gentlemanlike letter of Mr. Dawson, V. S., of Boulogne, with re¬ 
ference to my assertion, that I neither see nor hear of corns in 
France. It is true, I am not likely to see them—allowing them to 
exist—because I am not in the habit of attending forges; but I re¬ 
peat the assertion, that the generality of French smiths in this 
neighbourhood seem scarcely aware that such a disease does exist. 
But allowing corns to exist, even to the extent named by Mr. 
Dawson within his own practice, namely, to that of four out of six 
horses being affected by them, the case would stand thus :—as we 
certainly do not see four horses out of six lame in the feet in France, 
we must conclude that French horses can travel sound with corns, 
on French shoes. 
In answer to Mr. Dawson’s objection to French shoeing—that 
it would not answer for horses that go the pace of our English 
mail and other coaches, where the feet are rendered brittle and had 
from the concussion of hard roads,”—I have only to observe, that 
the estafette mail-horses, running from Paris to Calais, travel at 
the rate of ten miles an hour, shod, of course, by French smiths. 
And as for hard roads, those travelled by these horses are very 
hard and stony in summer; and they have forty miles of pave¬ 
ment in the journey. I must say that, amongst all the objections 
I have raised against French diligences, the losing of shoes on 
the road is not one: I have witnessed but a solitary instance. 
Again; if corns are so prevalent in horses working in Boulogne, 
as Mr. Dawson represents them to be, is it not extraordinary that 
the smiths of the town should not be au fait in finding them—at 
least, that they should not look narrowly into the foot for them 1 
I grant that the absence of the drawing-knife in a French forge is 
a great obstacle to a good searching of the foot; but I remember 
when no such thing was to be found in English/forges, except, 
perhaps, in London and a few great towns. Thanks to your pro¬ 
fession, they are now prevalent in most villages. 
The gentleman’s name is Lear, to whom I alluded as having 
brought four horses to France with corns, a year and a half back, 
but which have long since disappeared. He lives within half a 
mile of my house, and would feel happy in corroborating the fact. 
It is certainly a valuable one. 
The system of French shoeing appears to me to be this :—Frog 
very near the ground; bars (so called by us, but neither known nor 
thought of here among common shoeing smiths) cut away; sole 
full; shoe thick at toe and turned up; thin at heel and pressing only 
on the crust; convex ground surface, concave foot surface; large¬ 
headed nails, takiiuf the principal bearing on the ground, with their 
points coming out low in the crust. Now, if it be true, that corns 
are much more rare here than in England—which I believe to be 
