125 
ON THE EXPANSION OF THE HORSE’S FOOT. 
Mr. Charles Clark in Reply to Mr. Morgan. 
Sir,—M y attention has been drawn to a letter that recently 
appeared in your pages, from the pen of a veterinary surgeon, 
who, as it were in despair, has had the boldness, I may say the 
effrontery, to deny the expansion of the horse’s foot. 
This assertion, and the experiments,” as they are called, by 
which he attempts to substantiate it, would have deserved no 
reply from me, had it not been followed by another letter (p. C85) 
of very high pretensions to superior knowledge and success in 
practice; hence, lest any of your readers should suppose that his 
arguments are unanswerable, I shall offer a few observations 
respecting them. 
In order to overthrow or set aside the clear proofs of its expan¬ 
sive powers, which anatomy and every-day experience afford to 
all who have investigated the subject, Mr. Caleb Morgan thinks 
it enough to report the results of certain equivocal trials, made 
with the calipers by himself and a mathematical friend, on the 
feet of some young horses. Nubia had stated, in the Sporting 
Magazine, that the foot would expand considerably under the 
weight of the horse, when quietly standing with one leg raised 
from the ground. Mr. Morgan states, that this did not take 
place in the feet that he tried, and, therefore, denies the expan¬ 
sive quality in toto. Now, without refusing some degree of credit 
to both of those statements, we must remember, that it is not 
every one who can make an experiment properly; and also, that 
the result depends very much on the manner in which it is done; 
and that nothing is easier than to make an experiment not succeed 
when we wish a different result. 
That this organ is naturally elastic there can be no doubt, since 
we see, in its component parts, machinery expressly for this pur¬ 
pose, the frog being obviously given to fulfd this office; and in 
an experiment made with care, by Mr. Bracy Clark himself, in 
the presence of Lord Morton, this expansion was most apparent. 
This is an experiment (requiring some degree of skill, and, if not 
well performed, very inconclusive) which would succeed when 
tried on full-grown and elastic feet: in the cart-horse it might 
possibly fail, from the thickness and rigidity of the horn ; and 
also in the young colt, from the imperfect development of the 
elastic parts; and, most curiously, Mr. Morgan has selected this 
sort of foot for the ])urposc of his experiment: had he known 
