-and contain about 5 
SHEPHERD'S CROOK. 
dicecious, and apetalous, and bloom in April and 
May ; and its fruit are diaphanous, scarlet ber- 
ries, with a pleasantly acid taste. This species 
loves a soil of peaty loam. 
SHEPHERD’S CLUB. See Mounier. 
SHEPHERD’S OROOK. A cylindrical iron 
rod, peculiarly bent into a narrow hook-like form, 
and mounted upon a long wooden shaft. It is 
used for catching sheep, and serves the purpose 
well in dexterous hands; but requires to be em- 
ployed with great caution by a novice. 
SHEPHERD’S DOG. See Doe. 
SHEPHERD’S NEEDLE. See Scanpix. 
SHEPHERD'S PURSE,—botanically Capsella 
and Thlaspi. Two genera of herbaceous plants, of 
the cruciferous order.—The common shepherd’s 
purse, Oapseila bursa-pastoris—called by Linnzeus 
Thiaspt bursa-pastoris—is an annual weed of 
road sides and similar situations in Britain,and 
in most other countries of the world. Its root 
is tapering and whitish and has a smoke-like 
odour ; its herbage is rough with hairs ; its stem 
is branched, leafy, and from 6 to 20 inches high ; 
its radical leaves are deeply pinnatifid; its 
flowers are corymbose, small, white, and often 
tinged with purplish brown, and bloom from Feb- 
ruary till November; and its capsules are in- 
versely heart-shaped and somewhat triangular, 
seeds or upwards in each 
cell. The flowers and seeds are eaten by birds. 
Four very distinct varieties, besides the normal 
plant, occur wild in Britain,—the smaller, the 
apetalous, the entire-leaved, and the buckthorn- 
leaved.—The corn shepherd’s purse or penny 
cress, Thlaspi arvense,is an annual weed of the 
corn fields of Britain. Its stem is 6 or 8 inches 
high, and its flowers are white, and bloom in 
June and July—The alpine shepherd’s purse, 
Thiaspi atpestre, is a perennial-rooted weed of the 
meadows and pastures of some parts of England. 
it has a height of about 6 inches, and carries 
white flowers from May till July—The perfoliate 
shepherd’s purse, Thlaspi perfoliatum, is a bien- 
nial weed of the stony grounds of some parts of 
Hngland. It is also about 6 inches high and 
white flowered, and blooms from April till July. 
—Five or six exotic species of Thlaspi have been 
introduced to the botanical collections of Britain ; 
and 8 or 9 more are known. 
SHERARDIA. See Frutp-Manpper. 
SHERDS. Fragments of earthen pots, used 
in gardening for under-draining gravel walks, 
and for forming a drainage stratum beneath the 
soil of potted plants. 
SHIELD-FERN. See Asprprum. 
SHIFT. See Rorarron. 
SHIM. See Proven. 
SHINGLES. Pieces of thin board, used for 
covering roofs in the manner of tiles and slates. 
SHOCK, or Sroon. A small stack of sheaves 
of corn, set up in the field as soon as the corn 
is cut and the sheaves are bound, in order that 
ea may dry. Hight or more sheaves are set 
SHOEING. 209 
on end in pairs leaning against each other ; and 
two or four, called hoods or heading sheaves, are 
laid horizontally over them, by way of roof or 
covering to protect them from the weather. The 
size and form and constructing of shocks vary in 
different districts. Never more than ten sheaves 
are allowed to a shock in many parts of England; 
but so many as twelve or fourteen are common 
in the best parts of Scotland. The constructing 
of shocks is generally neater and more efficient 
in Scotland than in England. 
SHOEING. The artificial surface upon which 
the horse is made to tread in the performance 
of his labour—roads and pavements of various 
descriptions—requires that his feet should be 
furnished with some artificial defence; other- 
wise, his hoofs would speedily wear away, expos- 
ing the quick or sensitive parts of the foot, and 
rendering him so lame as to be perfectly useless. 
In some countries—in the sandy deserts of Arabia, 
for example—no such defence is said to be requi- 
site, at least for ordinary purposes; indeed, even 
in our own country, we may ride some horses for 
weeks and months together, with only sufficient 
shoe to cover the toe of the hoof, the part most 
subjected to friction and fracture. 
Whatever kind of shoe is used should consist 
of such material and be made of such a form as 
to interfere in the least possible degree with the 
internal mechanism and functions of the foot, at 
the same time that it serves every purpose of 
defending the hoof. A shoe made of any elastic 
or yielding material, possesses many advantages 
over one of an opposite description, because it 
allows of the expansion and contraction of the 
hoof ; but every such shoe is found by experience 
not to be adequately substantial and durable. A 
leathern shoe would hardly last for a single jour- 
ney ; and even if it were durable, it would want 
resistance sufficient to guard against fracture of 
the hoof. Iron, therefore, has almost universally 
become the material employed; and although 
manifold alterations and some improvements 
have taken place in the form and construction 
of the shoes, iron, in some way or other, is still 
the substance of which all are made. 
The toughness of the hoof and the strength of 
the crust afford a ready means of attaching the 
shoe; but as this must be effected by means of 
nails, and as these must be continued round a 
considerable part of the hoof, the crust becomes 
firmly fixed to the shoe, so as almost entirely to 
prevent the natural and necessary expansion 
and contraction of that part of the hoof; and as 
the action of the whole depends in a consider- 
able degree upon the individual parts, a general 
derangement of the whole foot is a necessary 
consequence of the interruption of these func- 
tions. It must have appeared, on the first appli- 
cation of a shoe, that it was necessary to allow a 
degree of freedom to the motion of the horny 
sole, because constant firm pressure on it, even 
in the strongest feet, will produce lameness ; con- 
O 
