Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/285

Rh Saxon coins have been discovered, and Mr Roach Smith informs me that the relics are entirely Roman. It would appear, from various evidences, that the villa had been built or repaired after the time of Constantine the Great, and an inscription 'Prasatia' leads to the surmise that it belonged to the husband of Boadicea. But the most important feature in this discovery is connected with our present subject: the recovery of one whole shoe and several fragments, which are said to have been with the other remains. But not one of these shows the outline we have hitherto been studying, and which has, with a few exceptions, so far as I have been able to learn, been characteristic of the shoes found with Roman or supposed pre-Roman objects. On the contrary, all exhibit what we would consider evidences of more recent manufacture. We no longer have the undulating border, the long and wide oval depressions, the narrow cover, the rolled calkins, and the large semicircular nail-heads. The nails and nail-holes are very like those now in use; the latter are stamped close to the margin of the shoe, the nails have been driven through the hoof, and the points twisted off and clinched in the usual way. The workmanship is entirely different to that we have been considering, and is much more advanced. One perfect specimen (fig. 92) measures 35/8 inches long and 4 inches wide, an imperfect one (fig. 93) 41/4 inches long and the same in width, while another half-shoe (fig. 94) is 45/8 inches long, and must have been equally wide. The breadth of it is extraordinary, measuring no less than 13/4 inch, and the shoe when complete must have nearly covered the whole of the horse's sole; it shows four nail-