924 
REVIEWS. 
denominated, for you may require liis assistance frequently 
during your travel to secure your pony^s clanking shoes, or 
to adjust a new pair; and you are certain to find him busy 
in the most crowded thoroughfare, or in the most stirring 
corner of the market-place. He is not generally a very bold 
man in his calling, nor has he much patience with skittish 
or unmanageable solipeds; for he too often makes it his 
practice to secure the unruly and vicious brute in the old- 
fashioned ^trevises,^ or stocks—exact counterparts of those 
employed by country farriers in Britain and the Continent 
half a century ago—where it is firmly bound and wedged in 
by ropes and bars, and a twitch—an instrument of punish¬ 
ment still tolerated in other lands—twisted to agony round 
the under lip of the subdued beast, until its extremities have 
been iron-clad. The more docile and submissive animal is 
less harshly dealt with, for it is allowed to stand untied, with 
one of its feet flexed on a low three-legged stool, while the 
workman shaves off great slices of superfluous horn from the 
thick soles, with an instrument which differs in no particular 
that we can see from the now obsolete ^ buttress ^ of Eng¬ 
land, or the present houtoir of France. Perhaps a fidgety 
draught animal does not quite relish the idea of parting from 
its worn-out shoes; and the squeamish shoer, to avoid sundry 
uncomfortable contusions on his shins, stands some distance 
off, and hammers at the end of a long thin-pointed poker, 
inserted between the useless plate of iron and the hoof, to 
twist it off."’^ 
The history of the ancient Britons has furnished Mr. 
Fleming with many valuable facts elucidatory of his subject; 
and this portion of his work has called for the most consider¬ 
able amount of patient labour. 
Then follow traditions of the “ iron age,^^ the history of 
shoeing in England after the Norman conquest, references to 
older veterinary writers; some among them Mr. Fleming 
has really brought to light; then we have records of the 
days of chivalry, when a sure-footed horse meant some¬ 
thing, even more than it does now, as a stumble might bring 
the disgrace of defeat on the rider. 
Tracing the history of horseshoeing throughout the six¬ 
teenth and seventeenth centuries, Mr. Fleming arrives at our 
own time, touches upon the establishment of veterinary 
schools on the Continent and in England, criticises the 
systems of shoeing which have been at different times the 
rage,^-’ and, without setting down aught in malice, does not 
spare the inventors upon the absurdities which are still in 
vogue. Mr. Fleming is not unnecessarily severe, and if his 
