Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/165

 of France boasted in all ages. A superior officer of cavalry, who is much more occupied with the varieties of horses than antiquities, exclaimed, on seeing this lot of shoes, that they had all belonged to Arab horses. Their width varies from 3⅓ to 4⅓ inches; their length from toe to heels 4 to 4¾ inches.'

The Celtic or Gallic, and the Gallo-Roman shoes, as we may then fairly designate them, possess a remarkable identity, and their special features it may be here convenient to notice a little more closely than in the report furnished by M. Delacroix of the interesting and valuable collection made in Besançon, where shoeing appears to have been largely practised at a remote epoch. Their most noteworthy characters are four in number: 1. The general shape of the shoe with regard to size, weight, and width of cover; 2. The shape of the nail-holes; 3. The outer border; 4. The nails. In shape, the Celtic and Romano-Celtic shoes are extremely primitive. 1. Their form is irregular and deficient in outline; the majority of the specimens I have seen give one the idea that the Druid smiths and their immediate successors (if they were really the workmen) did not possess an anvil with a bick-horn, or beak, to fashion them to the proper shape. The width of their surface is irregular, but in no instance have I observed it to be anything like that noted in shoes of the middle ages; and their thickness is inconsiderable. The size varies, but is always small, and such as would suit diminutive round-footed horses, or little horses with long, mule-shaped hoofs. None of the shoes have toe or other clips,