Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/623

 effects follow the use of his lunette shoes, and Lafosse was as well acquainted with the benefits to be derived from his method of shoeing as Charlier; while Osmer and Clark were earnest in their protestations against the fashion of removing the heels of the foot from the ground.

Experiments are still being conducted on an extensive scale on the continent, but particularly in France, in order to test how far the 'ferrure périplantaire' may be substituted for the ordinary method. My own trials, though they certainly have been on a limited scale, have proved very satisfactory. Draught and saddle horses have been shod, and in every case with advantage. The shoes employed weighed nearly one-half less than those previously worn, and have been retained firmly in their bed by from four to six small nails for each shoe. Two cases of foot lameness accompanied by very deformed hoofs and extraordinarily contracted heels, have immensely improved by using a shoe a little shorter than the ordinary rim—only reaching to the quarters, and, being light and narrow, incrusted on a level with the sole. An Arab horse with small feet, and whose frogs had been greatly injured by the native shoes he had been compelled to wear, has been shod for several months with a strip of iron weighing, for each foot, 3¼ ounces, and with wonderful benefit. The peculiar tendency of the Eastern horses' feet to become contracted when shod on the ordinary European principles, appears to have been successfully evaded, and the frogs so diseased and wasted previously, are regaining their normal size and firmness. The horses shod with these imbedded rims of iron have travelled with perfect freedom and safety on the hilly roads, often thickly covered by layers of sharp flints, in