Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/662

 hoof is practised. Although protecting the horse's foot from exposure to undue wear, and from the injuries which would befall it if made to undergo hardships with which it was not naturally designed to contend, yet, unless most judiciously employed, much that belongs to shoeing is a serious evil; and the skill of man ought therefore to be directed to the diminution or suppression of those prejudicial tendencies. For example, the employment of nails to fasten on the shoe, however carefully managed, is to a certain extent a source of injury to the hoof; but when used indiscreetly, is positively ruinous to the animal. No invention yet proposed has succeeded in retaining the shoe so firmly as nails, and the many failures that have resulted when other fastenings have been tried, leads to the belief that no means at once so convenient and so efficacious will readily be substituted for them. Again, different models of shoes have been devised to meet wants, real or imaginary, and to guard against the casualties incidental to the employment of the ordinary shoe, but without success; for one after another they have all been discarded, and the simple shoe, with all its defects, and but slightly modified to suit particular cases, has outlived them all. So that there appears but little chance that anything more simple, useful, or less injurious than the ordinary shoe, when properly applied, will ever stand the same prolonged test, or gain such universal favour.

But knowing the structure and uses of the several parts of the hoof and its contents, as well as the physiology and just proportions of the limbs, the skilful artisan, taught by the veterinary surgeon, should be able to