Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/580

 somewhat fashionable to shoe horses in stables, and Mr Miles says of it: 'The practice of shoeing horses in the stable, away from the forge, where there is no possibility of correcting any defect in the fitting of the shoe, is so utterly opposed to reason and common sense, that I should only have adverted to it as a custom of by-gone days, exploded with the use of the buttress and the notion of chest founder, if I had not actually witnessed its perpetration within the last year, and that, too, in the stables of gentlemen by no means addicted, upon other matters, to yield their judgment a ready captive to other men's prejudices. Now if either of these gentlemen had happened to ask the smith what he was doing, the answer would, in all probability, have awakened him to a sudden conviction that he was giving his countenance to a most unphilosophical proceeding; for the smith would have told him that he was fitting a shoe to the horse shoe, which the gentleman would at once perceive to be impossible, inasmuch as he had no means at hand whereby to effect the smallest change in the form of the shoe, however much it might require it; and the truth would instantly force itself upon him, that the man was fitting the foot to the shoe, and not, as he supposed, the shoe to the foot. To fit the shoe to the foot without the aid of anvil and forge is impossible; and any one acquainted with the exactness and precision necessary to a perfect fitting would not hesitate to declare the attempt to be as absurd as it is mischievous.' Some excellent examples are given of the injury and inconvenience likely to arise from this stupid fashion.

In this accuracy of fitting the shoe by burning it to