656 
ON HORSE SHOES'. 
The interior of the shoe is in the shape of a Norman arch 
of the twelfth century. The peculiar make of this horse-shoe, 
the depth at which it was discovered, and it being mingled 
with undoubted Roman remains, prove that it must be of high 
antiquity, pointing to the Roman British period as the age 
of its fabrication. 
Another horse-shoe of iron (fig. 2) is much of the same fashion 
as the one exhumed in Lothbury, but of rather larger size, 
measuring about four and a quarter inches long. It is per¬ 
forated for six nails, bulges at the outer edges, and has pro¬ 
minent calkins at the heels, made by doubling over the iron 
and welding it. 
It was discovered some years back in Moorfields, in the 
line of the Old London Wall. In the British Museum is an 
iron horse-shoe, which may safely be regarded as belonging 
to the same age as the two examples before us. It was found 
with fragments of Roman potter}q boar’s teeth, &c., in making 
the sewer in Fenchurch Street in 1833. 
M. Roach Smith informs me that a horse-shoe has been 
discovered within the Roman encampment on Hod Hill, 
Dorsetshire. If these specimens exhumed along with 
Roman remains, do not establish the fact of their Roman 
origin, they are nevertheless sufficient to make us pause ere 
we assent to the notion that the Romans were unacquainted 
with the modern practice of horse-shoeing. 
Two exceedingly curious horse-shoes, similar to those found 
in London, were discovered some years back near Sidbury Hill, 
in Wiltshire; two or three very large headed nails remained 
in the holes, and were singularly beat round, showing that 
they were clenched after being driven through the hoof of 
the horse. Mr. Bracy Clark published a plate and short ac¬ 
count of these shoes. 
That the Britains were familiar with some kind of protection 
for the hoofs of their horses, either at the time of the Roman 
invasion or soon after it, is evident from their possessing a 
name for such an article. They called the horse-shoe pedol , 
pi . pedolau, from the Celtic ped, a foot. Fosbrooke states that 
Sir R. C. Hoare found the half of two horse-shoes in a 
British barrow” in Wiltshire. 
It is said that horse-shoes have been found in the graves 
of some of the old Germans and Vandals, in the northern 
countries, but their age has not been determined.* 
In the British Museum is an ancient iron shoe, found in a 
mine in Hungary, which had been encrusted with copper from 
long lying in water impregnated with that substance. It is 
* Beckmann, vol. ii, p. 293, ed. 1817. 
