Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/598

 the action of caloric, the nails enter it with more facility, the clips and inequalities are more easily incrusted, and when it recovers its habitual consistency after cooling, the union between it and the metallic parts which are in juxtaposition, and which penetrate its substance, become all the more intimate because of the slight contraction that follows the dilatation produced by the caloric. In these conditions, the horn contracts on the shanks of the nails, ensheathing them still more firmly. Nothing like this occurs in cold fitting. The shoe so fixed is held to the hoof by the clenches alone, and, as often happens, the coaptation between these two not being very intimate, the branches of the shoe spring under the foot at each step, the clenches are easily broken by this movement, and the shoe is detached.'

Professor Goyau is entirely in favour of the shoes being fitted while in a hot state.

It is impossible to notice all the new shoes introduced in France. As in England, many of them were scarcely submitted to trial before they failed; others underwent a longer ordeal, and gradually subsided into forgetfulness, while the best-devised never attained to any degree of popularity. In 1820, M. Sanfarouche introduced a shoe which had its brief day. Believing in the expansion of the foot to the same extent as did Bracy Clark, this device was merely an English fullered shoe, or, as sometimes occurred, one stamped in the French fashion. It was of the same thickness throughout, was bevelled and seated like the ordinary shoe in use in this country, and wider at the heels than elsewhere, in order to facilitate the expansion of the hoof. It was also narrow, to prevent slipping. A