Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/239

Rh the antiquity of this form of shoe there is no possibility of judging, because the exact counterpart of it existed already at the period when the Ionian Greeks had established fixed symbols as types of their cities and communities. It occurs on the coins of Lycia, and is known to numismatists by the name of Triquetra (fig. 69). If there be any difference, it is in a row of points on the Lycian type, as if the shoe had been perforated with holes for small nails (fig, 70); and what makes the selection of this object for a symbol of the region in question the more remarkable is, that, in remote antiquity, it was there Celtic breeders are reported to have first commenced their trade in mules. The horse-shoes of early historians, since they do not mention farriers, appear to have been of this Lycian form, or were not fastened with nails driven through the horny hoof. It is difficult to escape an admission that horse-shoes of this kind are as old as the Ionian establishments in Asia Minor, unless by denying that neither the Circassian brand-mark nor the Triquetra of Lycia represent them; a conclusion which at least is totally at variance with the denomination of the mark by which the Kabardian breed is known, time out of mind. . . . The round shoe of the old Arabian method is evidently a modification of the Circassian or Lycian, the outside clamps being omitted, and nail-holes substituted. . . . That the Arabs of the Hegira (A.D. 622), or within a generation later, shod their horses, is plain, if we believe the received opinion that the iron-work on the summit of