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 162 unconscious precursor of the non-shoeing system; and this at a late date. The snow would have ‘balled’ in the hoofs of iron-shod horses, and the eight degrees of frost would have rendered the ground too hard for them to alight upon it after each leap. Guttapercha staved off these difficulties, but the naked hoof would have done better still if it had had a month’s judicious care previously bestowed upon it; and for many obvious reasons, one of which is that guttapercha applied over the whole sole would obstruct natural transpiration, and so cause an unhealthy state of the whole hoof, if its application were kept up continually.

All these ideas lead up to the main point, which is that the freer the hoof is from iron the better it does.

Should anyone doubt that transpiration is continually going on in the foot of a horse, let him put an unshod one to stand for five minutes on dry flagstones, and then he will see the imprint of each foot marked in damp upon them; or, as Mayhew puts it, let him hold a wineglass with its mouth reversed upon the sole, and then he will find that the inside of the glass becomes shortly covered with dew. This frightens the grooms into the belief that it is an unnatural phenomenon, because it cannot be seen in a shod horse. The current of air which the raising up of the foot by the shoe admits underneath the foot carries off the vapour, and so does not permit of its condensation upon a dry floor. This forbids the constant employment of