Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/502

 on the form and manner of applying shoes that not only depends the preservation of the feet, but also the safety of the limbs and the harmony of movement. We always find ourselves more active and nimble when we wear easy shoes; but a wide, long, and thick shoe will do for horses what clogs do for us—render them heavy, clumsy, and unsteady.'

After giving a brief notice of the anatomy of the foot, the necessity for the farrier to understand this, and also the fact that the horse, in a natural condition, ought to have the whole extent of its foot placed upon the superfices of the ground it covers, he refers to the defects of the shoeing then in vogue, and as aptly as if he had lived in our own day: 'As it is not possible to employ unshod horses on paved roads or hard ground without running the risk of destroying some of the parts just mentioned, we have been compelled to shoe them; but the actual method is so injurious that, so far from preserving their feet, it concurs to their destruction in occasioning a number of accidents, as I will demonstrate.

'1. Long shoes, thick at the heels, never remain firmly attached to the feet in consequence of their weight, and break the clinches of the nails.

'2. They require proportionately large nails to retain them, and these split the horn, or frequently their thick stalks press against the sensitive laminæ and sole, and cause the horse to go lame.

'3. Horses are liable to pull off these long shoes when the hind-foot treads upon the heel of the fore-shoe, either in walking, while standing by putting the one foot upon the other, between two paving-stones in the pavement,