Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/420

392 these shoes are to be found in the seals of Walter Marshall, and Ralph of Durham, already figured. Some years ago, at the formation of the London, Chatham, and Dover railway, in a cutting near Meopham, Kent, a shoe of this description (fig. 145) was disinterred. It is very heavy, large, and shaped as if for the foot of a mule. The nail-head yet remaining has been somewhat worn, yet enough is left to exhibit its peculiar square shape. The shoe appears to have been pulled off, as it is much twisted. The toe looks as if it had been slightly bent or 'curved' up, like the present French shoe, and there are four nails on each side. The calkins are solid, thick, and high, and altogether it is a clumsy shoe; measuring, as it does, $4 1/2$ inches across the quarters, $5 5/8$ inches long, and $1 1/8$ inch wide in cover; and though much oxidized, weighing $18 1/4$ ounces!

Another specimen is here shown from the excavations at Besançon, and which is supposed by M. Megnin to belong to the middle ages (fig. 146). And a curious example of the shod horse, in which the nail-heads and calkins are very con-