Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/669

 Knowing this, before the animal is put to any service, the precaution is taken to have it shod. Indeed, usually long before this period arrives, the creature has to submit to the unreasonable routine which is for ever after to dominate its life of slavery. The farrier is repeatedly called in to trim and dress the young creature's hoofs, to rasp and cut them in an unmeaning fashion, so as to keep them in a good form for shoeing. When at last shoes are applied, the foot has to submit to an amount of alteration, cutting, rasping, and beautifying, which might cause us to exclaim with Snout, 'O Bottom (or rather foot), thou art changed! what do I see on thee?' The hoof has been brought into a shape conformable to the prevailing fashion.

So writes Voltaire, and if he had been an observing horseman, he would doubtless have included horses with mortals. By dint of knife and rasp, the dimensions of the organ, the foundation of the edifice, have been greatly reduced, and the animal rests on a narrower basis. The sole has been carefully denuded of its protecting horn until the thin pellicle of newly secreted material is exposed and readily yields to the thumb. The frog is 'scientifically' reduced on every side, the heels or commissures are well opened up, the bars are reduced in size and fantastically delineated, and the portion of the sole between them and the crust—the seat of corn—is carefully carved out à la Miles. The plantar surface of the foot altogether is much more concave than it was previously, and it looks like a masterpiece of workmanship. It may present