Page:Horses and roads.djvu/75

 Rh tough horn which the unshod colt possesses is a ‘roughing’ with which Nature sends him into the world, and which no artificial means can compete with. Why, then, should farriers ignore such an obvious fact, and direct all their perseverance and inventive powers to controvert Nature’s designs? ‘Because he who is uneducated and unable to comprehend principles can neither profit by his own experience nor abandon the paths of prejudice and custom.’

Mayhew says: ‘It is amongst the firmest physiological truths that Nature is a strict economist, and never does anything without intention’ (every one of education ought to know this without having their attention called to it by Mayhew, or in these pages); ‘that every enlargement or every depression—however insignificant it may appear to human eyes—is a permanent provision for some appointed purpose, and has its allotted use in the animal system.’ How, then, can the ignorant farrier, or anyone else, by carving the hoof to his own fancied artistical shape, be doing otherwise than upsetting Nature’s fearful and wonderful designs? ‘Man has for ages laboured to disarrange parts thus admirably adjusted. When so employed, he has only followed the example of the savage who destroys the product he is incapable of understanding. No injury, no wrong, no cruelty can be conceived, which barbarity has not inflicted on the most generous of man’s many willing slaves.’

Another writer observes that ‘appealing to the