EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
232 
veterinary and shoeing establishments he has particularized, 
with less bias and a more searching spirit of inquiry, he 
would find one great and essential difference in the make of 
the horseshoes they were, respectively, in the habit of using. 
Indeed, if we mistake not, he carried away with him in his 
portmanteau shoes of a different pattern quite from the majority 
he must have met with , and, we will add, of a pattern superior 
to that even of his boasted French horseshoe. We know that 
we are quite at variance in our opinions about shoeing with our 
scientific neighbours over the water; but for all this, we are, 
at least for our own part, insensible neither to some disad¬ 
vantages in our own shoeing nor to some advantages in their 
practice of the art. Shoeing, at best, is but a necessary evil. 
Horses’ feet would conserve their natural form and soundness 
infinitely better without shoes than with them; for which reason 
it is that half-shoes or tips are found to be so much less produc¬ 
tive of mischief than whole ones, be the latter of what make 
or shape they may. In respect to the horseshoes exhibited in 
the Crystal Palace, we agree with M. Gourdon, that their chief, 
if not sole, pretensions to excellence, lay in their exquisite 
workmanship and admirable polish: as for their fullerings and 
notches, denticulations and serrations, they were “ all my e} r e 
and Betty Martin.” Certainly, two smoth surfaces coming into 
collision would slip readier one over the other than rough or 
asperous ones would ; but, as M. Gourdon truly remarks, the 
object is more fully and effectually answered by the French 
nailing, and such we believe, with Goodwin, to be preferable to 
our own. 
But when, with the intention of shewing that French shoe¬ 
ing altogether is superior to English, M. Gourdon brings 
forward the old alleged proof of there being comparatively 
few lame horses in France while England abounds with them , 
we must beg leave to raise, in limine , our voice against an 
assertion which to us has never appeared of the most irre¬ 
fragable character ; or, supposing the fact to be proved, at all 
events, most strongly do we protest against the setting down of 
it to the account of shoeing. AVe believe that Apperley (Nim¬ 
rod) was right when he said, that it was the pace that lamed so 
many of our horses; to which we would add, the battering the 
