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Utmost to remove from its path any pain or discomfort which this exaction may entail. I can conceive no greater torture man can inflict on this most willing servant, than that induced by ignorance or neglect in the application of shoes to its feet.

Let every one who can, strive to prevent the unscientific and ruinous mutilation of the hoofs by paring and rasping. It is a practice which is only worthy of a barbarous age, and was a fit accompaniment to the hideous fashion of cropping the horse's ears, amputating his tail, and curving the miserable stump remaining over the poor animal's back—a fashion which, though it made a burlesque of nature's handiwork, was yet far less injurious and torturing than a vicious system of shoeing.

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