Page:Horses and roads.djvu/187

 Rh It is allowed that the cause of this disease proceeds from the violent exercise over hard roads, and that young horses are most liable to it: of course, all combined with heavy wide-webbed shoes, fastened on to mutilated feet.’

As a remedy or a prevention of concussion, Mr. Douglas proposed to let guttapercha into a dove-tailed groove on the face of the shoe. At the best, this would have been only a partial remedy, but the shoe never came into use. No innovations find easy acceptance; and why? Mayhew solves this conundrum, when he tells us that ‘it is in their own interests that farriers make no improvements!’

The crippled screws of which we are now speaking would always be wanting to rest one fore-foot and one hind one at one and the same time, and alternating them frequently, besides drooping their heads in despondency, when they were at a stand. Here comes in another purpose of the bearing-rein, which is that of ‘pulling them together,’ and thus hiding from the ignorant the infirmities and sufferings in their feet, by the application of counter-irritation. Thus they are supposed to make a better show when drawn up in Regent Street, or at Lancaster Grate, or, say, even at the door of Willis’s Rooms, when an anti-vivisection congress is sitting. If only for the sake of decency, we should show a little consistency. Let it be understood that we are not arguing either pro or con. on the question of vivisection of the lower animals; we have our own opinion on the subject, but we prefer to stand in