Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/238

 CHAPTER V.

At what period Eastern nations first began to apply an iron defence to their horses' feet, and attach it by nails, it is impossible to fix with certainty. An anonymous writer in the United Service Magazine for 1849, quotes the form of the most ancient Asiatic horse-shoe as being exemplified in the brand-mark of a renowned breed of Circassian or Abassian horses, known by the name of Shalokh. 'The shape is perfectly circular, and instead of being fastened on by means of nails driven through the corneous portion of the hoof, it is secured by three clamps (fig. 68), that appear to have been closed on the outside, or on the ascending surface. Of