Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/167

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GALLO-ROMAN DISCOVERIES.
143

borne by a goat, bore the stamp of antiquity; also the coulter of a plough, a hammer, a horse-shoe, and a spur—these latter were of iron. Founding an opinion on the style of the chandeliers, this group of objects was supposed to belong to the Gallo-Roman or Gallo-Frankish period. The shoe (fig. 19) has six nail-holes, and its border is

fig. 19 fig. 20

markedly undulated; the nail-head is also of the Celtic pattern. The length of the shoe, according to the scale, is about 4½ inches, and the width 3 inches. The spur is undoubtedly very antique (fig. 20).

M. Castan has seen the half of a horse-shoe, which had the sinuous border and the usual number of holes, as well as a calkin, extracted from a Gallo-Roman villa at Egliseries, in the Jura, on the same level from which a coin of Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 161) was gathered. This villa appears to have been destroyed in the second century. Many articles in bronze and iron accompanied it, and all were covered by a thick bed of rubbish, consisting chiefly of tiles and Roman pottery.

In 1842, M. de Widranges met with an iron horseshoe in the ruins of a Gallo-Roman habitation, in Sauvoy