Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/603

 narrow shoe of Moorcroft, Mavor, and others. It consists, or rather consisted, in the insertion or imbedding of a narrow, but comparatively thick, band of iron or mild steel, around the front of the foot, in a recess cut out for it in the crust or wall of the hoof, and is very simple to look at and to consider. Only remove so much comparative soft and brittle horn, and substitute a hard, tough rim of iron or steel, almost as light (if we look at the ordinary shoes) as the material you remove, and you have insured the soliped against the effects of travelling, and almost restored his foot to its pristine condition.

Such is the Charlier method of shoeing; and if it has been modified in one or two essential features since its introduction, in others it has withstood the test of time, and testified in the most unequivocal manner to the correctness of the teaching afforded by the great author of modern and humane farriery. The idea of this method of shoeing, M. Charlier says, was suggested by the fashion of arming the extremity of a walking-stick by a ferrule, which everybody knows is a most efficient protection to the mass of wood it encloses.

On the 10th August, 1865, he makes the following communication to the Société Impériale et Centrale de Médecine Vétérinaire: 'Many among you have already heard of a new system of shoeing that I have imagined to prevent horses from slipping, at the same time affording them a natural bearing on the ground, and opposing contraction of the heels, and preventing several diseases caused by the shoeing now in use. Have I solved this difficult problem? I hope so; for the theory of abler authors founded on the anatomy and physiology of the foot is