Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/495

 Rh the hoof, it is the probable, if not evident, cause of many affections of the foot and leg, which impair the usefulness and must affect the comfort of the animal.” If we add that the hunter is benefited almost more than other horses by being allowed to use his feet as Nature made them, the admission is made in the interests of the horse and not as an expression of opinion on the controversy respecting the right or the wrong of fox-hunting. It is enough to say that for horses which have to move rapidly, and to come down with a sudden shock on sticky and slippery ground, the natural course of the process of expansion and contraction is of the first importance. For those who may care nothing for the gratification of hunting-men, it may be amusing or provoking to learn that, in times of hard frost, hunters have been enabled to chase the prey by the aid of gutta-percha soles fastened to the feet; but all who are anxious only for the welfare of the horse will see in this fact strong evidence of the uselessness of the iron shoe. The plain truth is, that differences in the quality of soil, be it hard or soft, stony or sandy, smooth and slippery, are of comparatively little importance to the horse whose feet are as Nature made them. In the words of “Free Lance,” “the unshod horse can successfully deal with all roads”; and assuredly no one will dream of asserting that shod horses can do this, for on the setting in of frost, for instance, they can not be worked until certain ceremonies have been gone through at the blacksmith’s forge. The unshod horse can tread firmly on the slime of wood pavement when shod horses are slipping and struggling in agony around them; he can gallop on ice, and trot for miles together on the hardest and roughest flint roads, with far more ease and comfort than horses whose feet are shod with iron, or even with gutta-percha. “Free Lance” rightly remarks that “if they could not there would be an end of the thing, for evidently the horse should be able to go anywhere and everywhere, and at a moment’s notice.” It seems hard to produce the conviction that the natural sole of the horse’s foot is almost impenetrable, that it is so hard and strong as to protect the sensible sole from all harm, and that all feet exposed to hard objects are made harder by the contact, provided only that the sole is never pared. This adequacy of the horse’s foot to all demands that may be made upon it is forcibly illustrated by Mr. Bracy Clark, who, like Mr. Douglas and Mr. Mayhew, contented himself with striving to produce a perfect shoe, although he acknowledged that, if we wish to appreciate the full beauty of its structure, “we must dismiss from our views the miserable, coerced, shod foot entirely, and consider the animal in a pure state of nature using his foot without any defense. Probably Mr. Clark thought that, though we may consider it in its natural state, few can ever so behold it, as all horses in civilized countries are in greater or less degree brought under artificial conditions. The plea is fallacious. The horse is clearly intended by nature to serve as a domesticated animal; and, so long as we do not interfere with the