Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/423

 willingly; he recommends that the hoofs be shod with shoes of a convenient weight, round, and adapted to the shape of the feet. The shoe to be light, and narrow towards the extremity of the branches, as in proportion to the narrowness of the shoe at the heels would the horse's hoofs become hard and strong. The thicker the shoes of the young horse, so the more liability was there to the hoofs becoming weak and soft; and so long as horses continued to be shod in their youth, so would the hoofs become large and hard.

Veterinary medicine at this stage in the revival of the arts and sciences was almost, if not entirely, Italian, and the best and most original writers on it were natives of Italy. After Ruffus, the principal author on the diseases and management of the domestic animals at this period is Petrus de Crescentiis, of Bologna, a philosopher, lawyer, physician, and traveller. His work, written when he was seventy years of age (1307), had an immense success, treating, as it did, of every branch of agriculture; and