Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/533

 feet inclined to the other extreme, whose heels are weak and low, if the shoe be set somewhat short at the points of the heel, such will, by degrees, improve and grow higher.

Yet an English farrier can never be prevailed on to believe that weak low heels will become stronger by leaving them exposed to hard objects. But it must be expected that horses with weak or diseased feet, who have been accustomed to go in long, broad shoes, will at first go very lame in shoes which are either short or narrow. And many that are lame of the shoer with various disorders in their feet, would be cured by Lafosse's shoes, ''if the frog, sole, and bars were not pared out. But when those things which are designed by the Divine artist as a natural defence to the interior part, are cut away by the superior wisdom of our earthly artists, why then, undoubtedly, Lafosse's shoes will not do, for the horse requires some artificial defence to supply the loss of the natural one''. Now it is the weight, unequal pressure, form and action of the iron made use of to protect the foot when it is thus horribly abridged by our artists, that is productive of almost all the evils incident to horses' feet.' These words of Mr Osmer are as true and applicable at the present day as they were more than a century ago. This writer also speaks of the drawing-knife—a weapon quite as, if not more, destructive than the boutoir, both of which are here represented (figs. 187, 188).