PERIPLANTAR SHOEING. 
707 
all near the truth that lamenesses are diminished in pro¬ 
portion as the weight of the shoes is augmented—and hy 
which, as we are desired to believe, vibration ” is annulled 
—there should be no lame horses, unsound feet, or broken 
hoofs, as for generations heavy shoes have been the rule, and 
light ones the very rarest exceptions. If vibration of metal 
alone be the cause of disease,how is it, we may ask, that the hind 
feet escape while the fore ones suffer so severely ? The contrary 
is the truth, however, if we are to believe the evidence of our 
own senses, or to accept the testimony of those who even 
advocate heavy shoes ; for it would appear that weak, flat 
feet, and inflammation and other disorders of these organs, 
are scarcely ever absent from their practice; and as heavy 
shoes were chiefly concerned in the production of these, 
therefore, heavy shoes are to cure them —similia similibus 
curantur. 
For heavy shoes, we are ordered to understand, possess 
physical properties which, perhaps, no other bodies in creation 
are endowed with ; as, according to some new mysterious 
law which is only applicable, it seems, to horse-shoes, the 
heavier the mass of iron attached to a horse’s foot, the lighter 
that foot must fall on the ground. Newton’s law of gravita¬ 
tion is simply reversed; it is not the earth that attracts, it is 
the heavens ! Nay, more wonderful still, the more ponderous 
the mass of iron fixed to the periphery of the limb, so all the 
more easily and speedily can that limb he flexed and ex¬ 
tended, and all the longer can it be swung backwards and 
forwards during progression. 
In fact, to convert a Liverpool or Manchester dray-horse 
into an Eclipse,” or even something more fleet—to endow 
it with untiling energy, give it the footfall of a fairy, and 
make it proof against all those ills to which the soliped is 
liable—and wdaich, it now appears, are entirely due to a con¬ 
venient something only found in light iron shoes, and termed 
vibration ”—we have but to go on increasing the metal, 
stouter and more ponderous make the shoes, and then, 
behold! farriery has achieved its highest development. 
What has been called practical experience ” has triumphed 
over theory (so termed) ; the mole-eyed routine of centuries 
is to reign for ever, and science and common-sense must 
listen with awe and astonishment to the pseans of the self- 
satisfied armer of hoofs. How the shade of old Markham 
must exult! What stupids our trainers and racehorse owners 
must have been not to ballast their fleet coursers’ feet with 
iron before the race—^just as a ship is ballasted when about 
to proceed to sea—and keep in mind the injunction that the 
