Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/699

 strong in the manner I have described, will suffer no inconvenience in having the nails driven well home in the shoe. Every nail should form a part of the shoe, and scarcely project above it; and when all have been firmly wedged in, they should be tightly 'drawn up' by hammer and pincers. Nothing then remains to be done but to bend down, or 'clench,' the small portion of the nail that remains on the outer face of the crust, after the point has been twisted off. This should be accomplished by shortening the fragment with the rasp, so as to leave just enough to turn over; then with the slightest touch of the knife or the edge of the rasp, the small barb of horn immediately beneath it is cut away—no notch or trench must be made, and the clench laid down flush with the general face of the crust. No more rasping or cutting should be permitted on any account.

It is usually recommended that the wall should not be rasped above the clenches; they who give this recommendation are ignorant of the fact, that as much, if not more, harm is done by rasping below than above these rivets. Those who study what I have said concerning the structure of the crust of the hoof will readily enough understand how this happens. Over the whole external surface of this part, it has been shown that a beautifully fine translucent horn or varnish was spread, to prevent undue desiccation of the horn, and consequent brittleness. Immediately beneath this are the dense resisting fibres, which are intended to resist wear, and are most capable of supporting a shoe, through the medium of the nails; in fact they are the fibres which ought to perform this duty, as beneath them, towards