Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/225

Rh the Suevian cavalry, under Ariovistus, that the Sequani either fought with or against, in the wars between them and the Ædui or Romans. Colonel Smith, in noticing the universality of horse-shoeing, says for Germany: 'We have seen it sculptured in bas-relief with a Runic inscription certainly as old as the 9th century, accompanying a figure of Ostar, upon a stone found on the Hohenstein, near the Druden altar in Westphalia, a place of Pagan worship that was destroyed by the Franks in the wars of Charlemagne. Had the horse-shoe been invented in that age, it could not already have become an object of mysterious adaptation in the religion of barbarians, which was on the wane at least a century earlier.' Grosz mentions that, in the years 1730, 1744, 1761, and 1820, a somewhat large number of horse-shoes was found at certain places in Bavaria, during excavations. Some of them were very deeply buried, and thickly covered with rust. Though he does not altogether coincide in the views of several antiquarians as to the antiquity of these objects, yet his remarks are not without interest, particularly as he describes the different varieties which have been noted in Germany. 'The horse-shoes which have come down to us from remote periods, having been found in several parts of the country at various depths, show in general three essential varieties.