ON SHOEING HORSES. 
551 
all know how horses’ shoes were made : paired in sizes, and when 
a horse came to be shod, the old shoes were taken off and a 
pair of the same size were selected to be fitted, i. e. adapted to 
the hoof. If the heels were high and the sole concave, the shoe 
underwent no alteration of its upper flat surface, but was nailed 
on level to the crust from toe to heels. If the horse went tender, 
ficies of its oval, and nail-holes. He then opened the shoe a little at the 
heels, and marked the altered superficies of its oval and nail holes; he thus 
shewed it was impossible that this change could happen when the hinge shoe 
was nailed to the hoof, which circumstance rendered it as much fixed as the 
ordinary shoe. Mr. Bracy Clark, on seeing this, called out “ caliper!”—whether 
he wanted the compasses, or used this eastern term from being acquainted, as 
he was, with eastern languages and customs. Caliph-ah ! was used either 
by the prophet or one of his successors, in calling out to skilled workmen, 
and which Europeans corrupt into caliper. This mode of encouragement 
of the arts is talismanic in its influence on the human mind in oriental 
countries to this day amongst others besides Mahometans. Now, we cannot 
well write Mr. Physiologist—veterinarian or farrier; but of those that always 
allow the action of the hoof in shoeing, in contradistinction to those that do 
not, or do it only pro tern by springing the heels of the shoes of a lame horse. 
It is time the public should be aware which of the two is best capable of 
shoeing, so as to prevent horses going, as they gradually do, with few ex¬ 
ceptions, permanently lame in the fore feet. However, we leave it to the 
Editor’s better judgment, whether the title should remain, or Mr. substituted; 
bearing in mind for whom only these stories are intended, not for the vete¬ 
rinary student, who receives physiological instruction, but the shoeing smith, 
one of whom we only yesterday asked what name was on a cart, and the 
reply was “ I do not know; I am no scholar, Sir.” Yet men like this one 
could listen: the fiction may interest, while the matter instructed. Firemen 
have the plans of the engineer to work by, the shoeing smith only is without 
such instruction. An epithet so used cannot offend any one. All engaged 
in the practice of shoeing have used calipers, and when these are wanting 
the smith uses straws; all have, more or less, applied practical mathematics in 
this art, and it has been, in some measure, systematically applied to solve the 
problem of the action of the hoof, and to carry out the physiology in artificial 
application of springs to the heels of ordinary horseshoes, but with what 
success time only can shew. The school of design has afforded, in works on 
the foot, some assistance towards this end; and we are not without hope, 
that the pages of The Veterinarian will afford us, mates, such illustration 
as it may be able to obtain on the subject of physiologically shoeing horses. 
To provide additional labour for the shoeing smith, while at the same time 
the public will be immensely benefitted, is something in these times, when 
the political economist fails, producing distress in some classes, endeavouring 
to relieve others, which we do not purpose to do ; but, as John Lawrence 
wrote, “ these inequalities are unavoidable.” If spring-heeled shoes are found 
to be commercially profitable, these only will be used, in spite of all that can 
be said or written to the contrary ; but if this is not the case, these will only 
be occasionally used, although the general utility of physiologically shoeing 
horses be demonstrated, not only by the physiology of the foot by practical 
mathematics, by the example of the general utility of springs in saving from 
injury not only other machines and passengers, unequivocally supported by 
arguments of every kind, or Mr. Gloag’s conclusive experiments. Although 
the great Caliph himself were to rise from the dead, and say with II. K. White, 
