Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/169

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
FRENCH MUSEUMS.
145

the stalks or bodies than those now in use, and have the high, flat head which for a long time would serve the purpose of a calkin (fig. 22).

fig. 22

The museum of Nantes contains nine shoes with wavy borders. Two of these were found in the river Erdre, near Nantes, in 1827, during the construction of the Orleans bridge; the others have been extracted from the bed of the Vilaine, in the neighbourhood of Rennes, and from a tumulus near Pousanges.

The museum of Troyes, near Paris, possesses three shoes, two with undulated edges and six nail-holes. The third shoe is evidently more modern, and is very peculiar and fanciful in shape; being a modification, or rather exaggeration, of our 'bar-shoe.' in cutting the canal, and were described by M. Thiollet at the French Archæological Congress assembled at Troyes in 1853.

fig. 23

In the museum of Cluny, near Lyons, there is, says M. Megnin,[1] an undulated, very light, and very elegant shoe, which was found at Vassimont,

  1. Megnin, Op. cir. p. 26. To this veterinary surgeon's able but brief treatise, I am indebted for much of the foregoing description of the contents of several French museums.