Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/571

 and Bracy Clark: frog-pressure shoes, shoes with one or more joints, shoes in segments attached to a leather sole, shoes entirely of leather, shoes without nails to fasten on the foot like a sandal, and shoes in halves, as if for the cloven foot of an ox. In fact, the ingenuity of man appears to have been racked to accommodate this alternate opening and closing of the heels, and the ascent and descent of the sole; all the while the lower face of the hoof was robbed of its protection, and consequently made to undergo these very changes attributed to the iron plate and nails. The amount of torture inflicted by these well-meaning, but mistaken men has been immense—the loss inestimable.

One of the many modes of promoting expansion proposed and practised many years ago, was that of Mr Turner, and which was designated 'unilateral,' because of the nails being limited to the outside and toe of the shoe, leaving the inside to expand and contract ad libitum. It was but the revival of a method practised centuries ago in certain cases, in this country and in France, where it was known as the ferrure à la Turque. For a time this new fashion had a tolerable run, but somehow it soon began to decline, as the maladies it was intended to prevent were as prevalent as ever, the sole and frog-paring being still in a flourishing condition.

It would serve no useful purpose to enumerate all the books that have been written in England in this century on the subject of farriery, or to describe all the different shoes and different methods invented, reinvented, and borrowed without acknowledgment. Machine-made shoes of various patterns have been largely tried, and have