Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/619

 comparatively trifling weight of their shoes, the horses acquired a lightness of movement they did not exhibit previously. 3. They gained an extraordinary solidity on the pavement, and did not slip. 4. Many horses which always had corns and sandcracks, and could not be used without bar-shoes, spontaneously recovered from their infirmities after the application of this shoe. 5. Those frogs which were before shrunken and élranglé, became considerably developed, a fact which proves that this shoe is perfectly adapted to the physiological movements of the foot.

It will be seen that these horses were excessively overweighted with the ordinary shoe.

Professor Bouley, perhaps the highest veterinary authority in France, and a gentleman of great scientific attainments, laid much stress on the particular advantages to be derived from this large diminution in weight. He had given the system of shoeing his careful attention, particularly after the modifications it had undergone, and appears to have been much impressed with its favourable results, notwithstanding its having deviated from the rigorous application of the fundamental principle of rational farriery he had laid down: that at each renewal of the shoes, the foot be brought, by the aid of instruments, to the length and form which it would have had if the animal had not been shod, and the horn had been worn in a natural manner. He believed the disadvantages of the 'ferrure Charlier' were more than counterbalanced by its advantages. He noted that, in general, the feet of all the horses so shod acquired a tendency to become enlarged and regain their primitive form, a circumstance