Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/366

 'If, then,' says M. Megnin, 'we place the invention of horse-shoeing about the fifth or sixth century before our era—that is, at the period when Druidism was most flourishing—we only follow the indications furnished by the Celtic roads, and we remain within very probable limits. The Druids, taught the structure of the horse's foot by the numerous sacrifices they made of this animal, accustomed to the manipulation of metals, and their intelligence continually cultivated by study, were marvellously disposed to be the inventors of shoeing by nails. When we also look at the rational form they gave to their work—how wisely they placed the nail-holes, and how skilfully they made the nail-heads to form so many catches to assist travelling in rocky and mountainous regions—one cannot but be astonished at the perfection which the sacred smiths had attained in defending and assisting nature two thousand years ago.'

, is said to have read lectures on the bodies of more than 700 living men, to show therein the secrets and wonders of the human fabric.'

The discoveries in the tombs of Alesia and in the vicinity of Besançon, furnish us with such undoubted testimony to the antiquity of shoeing, that a high authority in France, who had assisted in these researches, declared, 'after these evidences I have no fear in asserting that from the time of the conquest of Gaul by the Romans,