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 196 must be let alone altogether. But in the case of the toe it is different, for attrition will not suffice to keep down an exuberant growth, and the rasp is, therefore, needed to remove it. All that have had the experience are agreed upon that point.

Bracy Clark dedicated the best part of his life to the task of producing a perfect horseshoe. He did not succeed in this task, any more than he succeeded in seeing the fall force of his own arguments. In this he was rivalled later on by Miles, who wrote:—‘The principal argument upon which the uninformed ground their objection to bringing in the heels of the shoe is the necessity which they affirm to exist for affording the horse more support at the heels than Nature has given him, and which they say my plan entirely deprives him of. Now, what does this argument amount to? Neither more nor less than a declaration that the Almighty Creator of the Universe has failed in imparting to the horse’s foot the form best suited to its requirements, and has delegated to the puny intellect of man the task of devising a remedy. Surely the stoutest sticklers for the infallibility of old plans and old prejudices will shrink from subscribing to such a doctrine as this.’ Mayhew wrote:—‘A return to perfect freedom could alone cure the evils caused by unnatural restraint.’ Still, after expressing himself thus, Mayhew ‘went home and invented another shoe,’ as Mr. Fearnley says, but one which never came into use, and never will.