Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/68

 knees, not too large, nor yet inclining inwards, and hard hoofs,’ showing that the latter were an essential quality in unshod horses. He also asserts that the hoofs are injured by standing in manure, as the horn thereby becomes softened.

Q. F. Horace (B.C. 30), in one of his famous satires, alludes to the mode of buying horses as practised by a certain class in his day. ‘This is the custom with men of fortune; when they buy horses they inspect them covered: that if a beautiful forehand (as very often happens) be supported by a tender hoof, it may not take in the buyer, who may be eager for the bargain, because the back is handsome, the head little, and the neck stately. This they do judiciously.’ And the same author, in one of his admirable Odes, alludes to the sound caused by the horses' unshod feet on the smooth flagstones of their wonderfully paved roads, and in a sense similar to that noticed in the Greek writers already quoted: ‘And the horseman will beat the streets of the city with sounding hoofs.’

It is interesting to note, that the poetical epithet of ‘sounding foot.’ is almost constantly applied to the horse by various writers, at this and a later period. For example:

Virgil (B.C. 20) in the Æneid, exclaims, ‘Infatuate!