Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/349

 he following reasons: 1. These objects have not, so far as I am aware, been found in any country at a period which we might designate 'pre-Roman '—that is, in any region where the Romans have not been, nor before their invasion of the regions in which these articles have been discovered. 2. They have been found most frequently, I think, in places where the simple ordinary nail-shoe has been met with, and either with it, or so situated as to show they belonged to, and were in use at, the same period. 3. The evidence now collected would appear to indicate that shoeing with narrow plates and nails was largely practised in several countries, even before the arrival of the Romans; and also that in all probability the Romans themselves shod their horses in the ordinary manner at the same time that these strange-looking fabrications were in use for some purpose or other. The advantages of shoeing by means of nails must have been very striking to the Romans when they first became acquainted with it; so much so, that we should indeed think them extremely stupid if they did not avail themselves of it, and still had recourse to this unlikely contrivance. Cognizant of the art of defending the hoof by a thin narrow plate of iron, pierced with six holes, and which could be made in a few minutes, and firmly secured to the hoofs in as brief a space of time, it cannot for a moment be conceded that they would either allow their horses to travel unshod until they were foot-sore, and then apply this complicated sandal, with a sole much harder than the ground, to the bruised surface; or work their horses continually with shoes which must have tasked the abilities of their blacksmiths to fabricate in less than an hour, and have required more than three