Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/606

 'Full of hope that the sole and the other parts would offer sufficient resistance to the hardness of our pavements and stony roads, I tried, and little by little, after many attempts, I at last imagined the shoe I now have the honour to lay before you.

'This shoe, thicker than it is wide, is very light compared with the ordinary shoe, weighing more than a third less; it is forged without trouble even by one man, and is turned, fitted, and attached as easily as the other. I am inclined to believe, then, that I have reached the end I proposed to myself, and which was to make horses travel unshod, or, since that was not possible with our paved and macadamized roads, at least with a simple rim of iron which allows all parts of the plantar surface, especially the frog and buttresses, to participate in sustaining the weight and adhering solidly to the ground.

'It is a long time since the great practitioner Lafosse had recognized the necessity of allowing the frog to play its part; we have not forgotten the famous lunette shoe which has been so much lauded, and the only inconveniences of which were that it allowed the horn of the heels to be split and prevented wearing of the toe, thus giving the limb a false position and interfering with free movement.

'My shoe has not these defects; for while accomplishing the same object, it protects the heels, wears regularly along its circumference, like the foot itself in favourable conditions.

'It is a solid artificial border, replacing the inferior margin of the wall, which is not strong enough to resist our hard roads. It is no more than this.