Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/584

 with a mode of shoeing I have adopted, as well as in the French method of Lafosse, and a modification of it which will be noticed presently, the sole does support more or less of the strain and wear, and not only with impunity, but to the advantage of foot and limb. The horse's sole, in common with that of every quadruped, was destined by nature to sustain more or less weight and wear, and if it is not cruelly deprived of what nature has wisely given it for that purpose, it will do so perfectly.

Colonel Fitzwygram's method of shoeing does not appear to have gained much ground. The difficulties in rounding or curving-up the toe of the shoe to a proper degree, and the objection of farriers and grooms to allow the foot to remain in a healthy unmutilated state, will, it is to be feared, operate, more or less, against its adoption.

The treatise, however, should be in the hands of every horseman, not only because of the excellent advice it contains relative to the preservation and defence of the foot, but also for the clear and philosophical discussion of the various predisposing causes of disease in that organ. Miles's method of nailing, and Colonel Fitzwygram's directions for maintaining the sole and frog intact, mark, perhaps, the greatest improvements in shoeing in England during this century.

In 1862, Mr Mavor, a veterinary surgeon in London, patented a form of shoe and method of shoeing intended to serve several useful and important purposes. The shoe was made of iron rolled by machinery into a particular shape; so that when formed it appeared as a narrow, though somewhat thick rim of metal, slightly concave towards the ground, the lower margin being thin; while the foot-surface