Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/641

 domestic animals for various purposes, led to a gradual increase of size in the horse, in order to, procure the greatest results compatible with convenience, and to save trouble and expense by reducing the number needed to draw a heavy load by at least one-half or one-third. That this result has been achieved, I need only point to the size and weight of the London dray-horse—or perhaps, better still, to the massive elephantine proportions of the Manchester or Liverpool waggon-horse, and the enormous power it can exert in moving and transporting loads which would have required two, three, or even four horses of the middle ages to stir. And this transformation could not have been brought about had the art of shoeing been unknown. The hoofs of these mammoth creatures, thick and large though they be, are not nearly strong enough to support their ponderous weight for very long, even when not in draught. But when their great strength is put forth in propelling some five or six tons in one of our streets, and halting and backing repeatedly with this load, it is easy to see that the unshod hoofs must quickly succumb to the strain imposed upon them, and the excessively developed animal would be then only a helpless mass of bone and muscle, and as useless as a railway engine off the rails, or with its wheels broken. Some idea of the great weight and attrition imposed upon the extremities of a horse of this description may be inferred from the fact, that shoes weighing from four to six pounds each are sometimes quite worn out within a month.

Intermediate between these tardy giants of busy cities, whose utility, nay, even existence, depends upon shoeing, and the original small-sized horse, the breeders display