416 
A. LIAUTARD. 
regions of the foot. And yet, the formation is only problematic, 
for, as says Coleman, 44 the efforts of nature to counterbalance 
the effects of art are so powerful, that the nails are drawn off by 
the excentrical motions of the hoof, which widens as it grows 
down.” For us, we have often observed young horses prematurely 
shod, and w T e never noticed a manifest stop in the growth of shod 
feet; after fifteen days of shoeing, the horn projected beyond the 
external border of the branches of the shoe, sure proof that the 
implantation of the nails had not interfered in' any serious way 
with the growth of the foot. 
. If, however, the fixedness of the shoe with the nails was suf¬ 
ficient to produce the contraction of the wall, would not a bar- 
shoe do it as well and even more than any other ? And then 
throwing aside the hind feet, though in them the nail holes are 
in many instances close to the heels, w T ould not all anterior 
shod-feet become hoof-bound in time ? Still we meet every day 
horses shod for ten, fifteen even twenty years, with excellent feet. 
To resume, we will not say, as M. Lafosse did, that in bring¬ 
ing the nail-holes of the shoe as near as possible toward the toe 
of the front feet, “ we favorize the actions of the causes which 
produce lioof-bound ; ” but we believe that without fear of error 
we can state, that when these nail-holes do not go beyond the 
middle of the quarter of the wall, as is generally the case, their 
implantation through the wall cannot produce any modification in 
the form of the foot. 
No doubt Bracy Cherk’s experiment, so often mentioned, seems 
to prove different. But it must not be forgotten that his ideas of 
the physiology of the foot were erroneous, that for him the frog 
acted as a key-stone, and that his shoeing had for object to relieve 
it from pressure with the ground. It is not surprising that that 
mode of shoeing gave rise to alterations in the form of the 
foot. As practical conclusions we will add that if peculiar shoeing, 
such as the hinge shoe, the unilateral shoe are injurious, they 
have no more effect upon the conservation of the form of the foot 
than the ordinary shoe. 
(To be continued.) 
