Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/539

 away with it. If this should happen a few days after the foot has been so finely pared (which is not unusual), or upon a journey, and at a distance from any place where a shoe may be immediately procured, the horse instantly becomes lame, from the thinness of the sole and weakness of the crust, and is hardly able to support the weight of his own body, much less that of his rider.'

This able writer gives two drawings of one of these terrible instruments of torture—the foot and ground surface of an ordinary shoe (figs. 189, 190).

The shoe recommended to be worn by Mr Clark is that described by Osmer, though he says it was employed by him many years before that veterinarian's treatise was published. 'In shoeing a horse we should in this, as in every other case, study to follow nature; and certainly that shoe which is made of such a form as to resemble as near as possible the natural tread and shape of the foot, must be preferable to any other. . . . . In order that we may imitate the natural tread of the foot, the shoe must be made flat, if the height of the sole does not forbid it; it must be of an equal thickness all around the outside of the rim (for a draught-horse about half an inch thick, and less in proportion for a saddle-horse); and on that