Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/526

 the horse's foot, was making progress. Though Osmer's observations are mainly based on the teachings of Lafosse, yet he does not blindly follow that celebrity, but having carefully tested the mode of shoeing advocated in the 'Nouvelle Pratique,' points out its defects in a very fair and reasonable manner. He is the first writer on this subject who gives us a good idea of the way in which the art was practised in England; and in doing this, he is particularly severe with those artisans whom Hogarth, in his picture of the 'Enraged Musician,' has delineated as wearing a cross-belt of bright blue decorated with golden horse-shoes, the badge of the peripatetic farrier. 'If you pretend to have your horse shod according to your own mind, it is a general saying amongst these men that they do not want to be taught; which is as much as to say, in other words, there is nothing known in their art, or ever will be, but what they already are acquainted with. . . . If you ask one of these artists his reason for acting in this or that particular manner, or should inquire of him the use of any part assigned to some particular end, he can give no answer, nor even pretends to have any knowledge thereof, but is guided by custom alone.'

After remarking on the necessity for shoeing in some countries and not in others, and the probable simplicity of the earlier attempts to defend the hoofs, he says, 'in process of time, the fertility of invention, and the vanity of mankind, have produced variety of methods, almost all of which are productive of lameness; and I am thoroughly convinced, from observation and experience, that 19 lame horses of every 20 in this kingdom, are lame of the artist, which is owing to the form of the shoe, his