154 
REVIEW. 
being readily reduced (o a smaller volume, does not render it ne¬ 
cessary that the hoof should dilate to admit of their expansion. 
The peculiar construction of the foot of the ass and mule is well 
calculated to demonstrate the main function, in regard to elas¬ 
ticity, performed by the flexible parts contained within the horny 
box. In these animals, the hoof is completely inexpansible. It is 
so narrow, so high and strong at the heels, so deep in the sole, so 
resistant in the bars and the concavities of the sole, altogether so 
thick and so rigid, that it is not conceivable it can possibly 
yield to the slightest dilatation internally ; yet is such conforma¬ 
tion of the horny case of foot unattended with any impediment 
to freedom of motion. And this arises from such inflexibility 
being compensated for by the inordinately proportionable de¬ 
velopment of the fatty frog and lateral cartilages, which project 
out behind the coffin-bone in a much greater degree than in the 
horse, and thus considerably augment the elastic apparatus of 
the pedestal of the limb. 
“ To resume—the essential phenomena of elasticity in the pedal 
(digitate ) region take place within the cavity of the horny box 
itself. This box concurs in their production but in a very small 
degree, since the lateral expansion of which it is the seat cannot 
exceed the restricted limits imposed upon it by the very small 
amount of elasticity tfle laminse and their subjacent reticulum 
are susceptible of. 
“ Beyond such limits the hoof could not expand without 
disarrangement of its integrity.” 
Here we shall make an end. That in devoting so much of 
our readers’ and our own time and attention as we have, 
to the examination, and if possible settlement, of a question 
so frequently before not veterinary men only but the public 
at large, we have been tiresome or even wearisome, we are 
unwilling to believe. To settle or set at rest such a ques¬ 
tion as the expansion of the hoof would amount hardly to 
less than the condemnation or approbation of this or that “ sys¬ 
tem of shoeing,” and so far tend to establish or overturn our 
present forge practice. Gloag among ourselves, and Reynal* 
among the French, deny that any expansion of the hoof takes 
* M. Reynal made a communication, in May 1851, to the National and Central 
Society of Veterinary Medicine, of a series of experiments made by him at the 
time he served in the army, so long ago as 1845, analogous to those of Mr.Reeve’s, 
to which they are antecedent in date, though they remain up to the present 
time unpublished. These experiments tend to shew that the alleged expansion 
(dilatation) of the hoof around its plantar circumference absolutely amounts to nil. 
