Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/599

 short time after this shoe had fallen into disuse, another inventor introduced a 'hipposandal' system of shoeing; a large establishment was opened for the manufacture of this article, and Paris was duly placarded with the marvellous results to be derived from the application of this humane invention to the feet of horses. It had but a very brief existence, and was quickly forgotten. Then another shoe was proposed to prevent slipping. This was almost identical with the winter shoe in use in Canada, in having its ground-surface quite concave, and the animal resting on nothing but a sharp margin, which could not fail to give excellent foothold so long as it lasted. Unfortunately this was only for a brief period, as the shoe was made of iron. Had it been manufactured of steel, as the Canadian shoe is, it would, in all likelihood, have proved too slippery for the pavement.

The prevention of slipping has determined, more or less, the form of nearly all the shoes and methods of shoeing proposed in recent times. Indeed, it appears to have been, next to the preservation of the wall of the hoof, the chief desideratum from the very earliest period. We have observed that the primitive shoes had calkins to grasp the earth, and, in addition, well-lodged nail-heads, that stood high above the level of the shoe, and while keeping the animal's foot on a plane parallel with the ground, endowed it with the grasping powers of a double row of catches such as no modern shoeing has furnished. A farrier of Tours some years ago endeavoured to imitate this very primitive mode, and made nails with an iron shank and a large steel head. These, their inventor said, possessed two advantages: 1. They preserved the shoe from wear, as the heads of the