Page:Horses and roads.djvu/169

 Rh for granted that such was the case. He strongly condemns ‘routine’ and ‘prejudice,’ yet he had a leaven of both still clinging to him.

Fortunately we are not obliged to wait whilst scientists work out the intricacies of the problems. In thirty days people have been able to satisfy themselves thoroughly of the error of their former ways as regards shoeing. Others will do the same; and some of them will not even care to hear at a future date how pathologists may have succeeded in interpreting things which are now to us virtually what cuneiform inscriptions would be to Zulus.

As has been remarked by ‘Santa Fe,’ people will still shirk the trial of doing away with shoes as long as they can, by making all sorts of trivial excuses to themselves. ‘Santa Fe’ already divines five such probable excuses, of which the one that is perhaps the most frequently urged is, that ‘they think there may be something in it, but they will wait until someone else tries it.’ But there is one unmentioned by him (although he foresees that there will be others) which is scarcely less used; and it is that many say they believe that it would answer well with most classes of horses, but that the particular kind of horse they possess—it matters not of what breed he may be, or what he may have to do—could not do without shoes, although all the others might do so. Mr. H. Jennings was not so narrow-minded as this. He had to do with the racer, and he found out that shoes were a nuisance, both to