Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/557

 only at the toe, where there was no motion, and the branches nailed as usual to the sides and heels, where this excessive play was supposed to be going on, it might have been foreseen that no good could result. The thin-heeled shoe, the bar shoe, and indeed every shoe, proved unsatisfactory to him, and the chief value of his experiments and labours rests on the demonstration of the changes brought about in hoofs by a vicious system of paring and shoeing them, which the highly-developed expansion theory caused Bracy Clark entirely to overlook. This author was of opinion that the sole and frog should not come into contact with the ground.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the false doctrine of lateral expansion and sole descent propounded by Bracy Clark and Professor Coleman, has had a most serious and pernicious influence on farriery, not only in this country, but on the continent; and has largely tended to the production and perpetuation of foot diseases that are torturing to the animal, and baffling to the veterinary surgeon.

The theories published by Bracy Clark, with regard to the elasticity of the foot, were certainly ingenious, but not to any degree original; though they were rashly speculative, and must have been based on the most slender instalment of proper experience and observation.

This century has been very prolific in treatises on farriery, inventions, and modifications of horse-shoes and horse-shoeing. In England, among other writers, at its commencement, were White, Blaine, and Peall. These veterinarians appear to have been more or less in favour of Coleman's thin-heeled shoe, and sanctioned the well paring-out method of preparing the hoof.