Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/52

 made of raw hide or coarse cloth (as Ludolphus tells us the Tartars used cow-hide for their horses' feet), passing round the feet and up the legs, like a laced boot. They will be noticed hereafter as solea.

Polydore Vergil (A.D. 1550), in his ‘De Inventoribus Rerum,’ informs us that the Thessalians were reported to have been the first who protected their horses' hoofs with shoes of iron. ‘Hos quoque (Peletronios, qui Thessaliæ populi sunt) primos equorum ungulas munire ferreis soleis cœpisse ferunt.’ This author, whose Latin was generally more elegant than his descriptions were faithful, does not give his authorities for this statement, which is unsupported by any proof of its correctness. In all likelihood, as Mr Pegge observes, he has misled himself by referring to Virgil, where that poet asserts that

Vergil made a mistake, or allowed himself to be deceived, when he described these primitive people of North Greece as the inventors of horse-shoes.

If we turn from the Greek writers who lived previous to our era, to the wonderful productions of the Greek sculptors, those divine works of art—those graceful chisellings portraying groups of men and horses, which are