Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/161

 Roman and Gaulish armies was merely a cavalry battle, in which were engaged from 20,000 to 25,000 horses, the facts just stated cannot but appear interesting, although they may possibly belong to a battle of a later date.'

I have not been able to find any more detailed mention of these grooved shoes than in this brief notice, and it would be important to ascertain if the groove be really continuous in any, or all of them. If the fact be as is stated, then they probably belonged to the horses of the German cavalry which we know Caesar largely employed to subdue the Gauls. These German shoes we will speak of hereafter. A very careful inspection of the Vingeanne shoes would be most interesting in various ways.

According to M. Mathieu, in the neighbourhood of Alesia, and in the valley of Brenne, the ground can scarcely be dug to the depth of 3 to 6 feet without discovering shoes of small dimensions, and the cover so wide that only a small triangular space is left for the frog. The excavations for the railway between Paris and Lyons, in the valleys of Armançon and Brenne, have exposed thousands even in the brief space separating Ancy-le-Franc from Alesia; while some have been found below the Roman road leading from Alesia to Agedincum (Sens). This road is supposed to belong to the Augustan era. M. Mathieu considers them to be of two sizes—a very small one, and a larger; a circumstance which may be accounted for by supposing that the German auxiliaries drew their supply of horses from different parts of Germany. The