Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/283

Rh is black, as all iron work is when just from the hammer. The specimen weighs only 41/4 ounces, and is 41/4 inches long, and 37/8 inches wide. The calkins are rolled-over in the usual way; the immense oval depressions for the nail-heads are stamped nearly through the substance of the shoe, and have been made by a blunt tool when the iron was very hot. There is nothing to indicate that the shoe had ever been placed on the bick or beak-horn of an anvil to give it its shape. The round holes pierced for the passage of the nails appear to have been punched through when the iron was in a cold state, as the round holes in the horse-shoes are made at the present day in Syria, Turkey, and the East generally. These apertures are only six in number, and there is no indication of attempts at raising a toe-clip. Both surfaces of the shoe are plane, and the workmanship is not of a very high order, but appears to have been executed in a hurried manner. The other shoe I examined had been found a short distance from it. It is very perfect, though slightly worn (it had been on the left fore foot), is precisely similar in figure, size, and other particulars, and is made of excellent iron. Accompanying these two shoes was a most interesting specimen found on the surface of the ground, on a high hill, one of the Cotswolds, which has been recently ploughed up by permission of the owner, who on that occasion discovered this shoe. The hill is in the parish of Haresfield, and is known as Broadborough Green, or Ringhill; and the spot where it was found is