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 Rh CHAPTER VIII.

THE ‘CHARLIER’ SHOE—‘IMPECUNIOSUS’ AND ‘KANGAROO’ ON THE CHARLIER SYSTEM—SOLE PRESSURE—INDIA RUBBER CUSHIONS AND PADS—PUMICE FOOT—ST. BELL ON ‘IMITATION OF NATURE’ IN SHOEING—MAYHEW, ‘NATURE IS A STRICT ECONOMIST’—DOUGLAS ON THE SHORT AVERAGE LIFE OF OUR HORSES—‘ONE HORSE COULD WEAR OUT FOUR PAIRS OF FEET’—PHILIP ASTLEY, ‘HE WHO PREVENTS DOES MORE THAN HE WHO CURES’—THE CHARLIER ‘SHORT’ SHOE, AND THE CHARLIER ‘TIP’—STANLEY SAYS NAVICULAR DISEASE IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH THE CHARLIER SYSTEM—EXPERIENCE OF MESSRS. SMITHER WITH CHARLIER SHOES—AMERICAN EXPERIENCE OF CHARLIER ‘TIPS’—‘FOUR INCHES OF IRON CURLED ROUND THE TOE.’

of the modern inventions, in the shape of shoes, has been that of M. Charlier; and ‘Impecuniosus,’ in his ardent desire to find something that would, or might, be any kind of improvement at all on what he looked upon as the prevalent and barbarous mode of shoeing, gave it a trial in a most enlightened and unprejudiced style, and approved of it. The shoe and the system do not appear generally known; and so it may be well, for those unacquainted with them, to describe both. Charlier started with the assumption that Nature had intended the horse to