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246 made rather flatter and broader on one side, viz., that side which corresponds to the flatness of the head.'

The nails were not pointed, as now-a-days; and appear to have been driven only a short distance in the hoof, and the end that had passed through was bent round and lay close to the side of the foot for safety. The sharp point was not wrung off, as is now the custom, but passing along the face of the hoof, was turned round like a carpenter's nail, and probably buried slightly in the crust, to give it a hold. 'The excellent preservation in which these shoes are found can only be accounted for by their having been for a long time defended, perhaps, by the hoofs to which they were attached, and secondarily, from their being deposited among flints and chalk, the most indestructible and undecomposable materials of all the earthy substances.' These relics are certainly extremely crude attempts in workmanship, and betray a very primitive period—the very infancy of the art,—more so, indeed, than any specimens that have yet been met with. Some time after they were discovered, the late Dean of Hereford obtained a horse-shoe similar in form, which had been found with others, and a skeleton, a short distance north-west of Silbury Hill. This was figured in the Transactions of the Salisbury Institute. Two specimens of similar construction, and which were found at Beckhampton, are now in the Museum at Cirencester, Gloucestershire. One of them (fig. 82) is much more primitive-looking than the other, and is of smaller size, agreeing very closely in this respect with those described and figured by Bracy Clark. The