Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/501

 with tremendous 'crampons.' In the Gobelins' tapestry, manufactured under that artist's direction, these massive projections are also depicted. A shoe of this description, copied from one worn by a saddle-horse, on a piece of Gobelins at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, and made in 1684, will perhaps give some idea of their proportions (fig. 182).

In the reign of Louis XV., however, the large calkins were generally abolished by the farriers, though the shoes were yet as long, if not longer, than before, and towards the heels were made heavy and thick.

Against this absurd fashion Lafosse uses every argument. Informing us that in Prussia, the fore-feet only were shod; in Germany, the fore and hind—each shoe having three calkins; in France, only calkins on the hind-feet; while in England the shoes were wide, thin, and with thickened heels, so that the frogs could not reach the ground, though without calkins before or behind; he says that all strangers visiting France carried in their train a farrier to shoe their horses in their own fashion, thinking it preferable, and that French noblemen did the same. Not that the mode of shoeing of any country was preferable to another—for native and foreign horses were alike badly shod—but because it was less an affair of reasoning than fancy and habit.

'The practice of shoeing horses appears to me to be good, useful, and even necessary on paved roads; but it is