Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/640

 covering for the feet, the weight each can carry is but small, the price of merchandise must be proportionally high, while the risks incurred are greater. If it be true that commerce is increased in proportion as means are afforded for facilitating communication between different parts of the same country, or between kingdoms, then it must be as true that nail-shoeing has conferred a benefit on mankind of no mean character. For whenever it had been ascertained that carriages could be constantly made serviceable in conveying merchandise for long distances by horse-power, and without inflicting any injury on the horses, then commercial relations became vastly extended: roads of every construction, not so much required to preserve the hoofs as to aid the wheels, began to be thrown open everywhere, and the arts and manufactures received a potent stimulus, and one quite as beneficial, if we consider the age, as railways and steam-ships have conferred in modern days.

Since the realization of the increased power which shoeing conferred on the horse species, a wonderful result appears in the increase of varieties or breeds to meet the many requirements sought for in horses for draught or riding.

The horse, in the earlier periods of its domestication, and in nearly every country, may be supposed to have had a tolerable uniformity of proportion adapted to the purposes for which it was trained—-those of carrying lightly equipped troops, and drawing small chariots containing few people. The enterprise of Western nations, however, and the skill they have for so many centuries shown in modifying or adapting the natural capabilities of the