Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/30

 a hundred-fold the value of the horse, and testifies to what an apparently insignificant operation very much of our immense progress in civilization has depended. I refer to the art of shoeing, by which, in arming that portion of the horse's hoof coming in contact with the ground, and sustaining the whole weight, while it receives the full force of the propelling power, would (in our northern climate, at least) under the strain of loadbearing or draught, soon be destroyed, and the animal rendered useless, injury is not only averted, but the utility and power of the horse are largely increased.

An art which has exerted some influence on the destinies of man, and lent its aid to the restless wave of human action, deserves some notice from those who care to note the sources and influences on which improvement and increased communication have relied; and if this be a modest one, it is at least endowed with all the more interest in consequence of its being so closely related to the conservation of the best qualities of the noblest quadruped on earth.

In a state of nature the hoof requires no protection. The solidity and toughness of its inferior border; the absence of artificial roads; nothing but the weight of the body to be supported; and the matter of which the horny case is composed never being subjected to any other influences than those which it is naturally adapted to resist, all tend to obviate any injurious amount of attrition in the roaming-at-will life of the feral horse. But in connection with climate, domestication alters, more or less, the conditions on which the horn depends for its integrity as an efficient protection to the highly sensitive