Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/163

 actually in progress in many streets of the town, for the formation of new sewers. The depth of the cuttings has not been so great as could, in the interests of archæology, have been desired; they have generally penetrated only to the 4th-century layer: that is, to the same level as the débris of the first Gallo-Roman villa destroyed by the Emperor Constantine, the veritable barbarian of those days, whose wish it was to raze systematically all the dwellings on the left bank of the Rhine to a distance of forty leagues, and to convert Sequania into a desert. This 4th-century ground is characterized by a layer of debris which rests on the admirable paved road so well preserved, and immediately beneath the middle-age strata. From the day of commencing this work, the labourers have been asked to collect carefully all rusty fragments denoting the presence of iron, and to note the level. As since the Gallo-Roman times, and even the Celtic period, the Grand-Rue of Besançon and the Rue Battant have not ceased to be the lines of thoroughfare, the strata, deposited, it might be said, century after century, have each in their turn rendered testimony to the manner in which animals have been shod during, perhaps, eighteen centuries. Indeed, in the Rue Battant, the roadway has been cut down to the living rock, which is here found grooved by ruts, and lies at least two mètres beneath the great layer of Roman tiles, cinders, and antique remains by which we at Besançon recognize the ruins of the 4th century. But everywhere is found, with differences in details only, the horse-shoe as at present known. . . . . The following are the most notable characteristics of these shoes: