Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/327

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DIVERSE OPINIONS.
299

senting themselves with Roman remains,—they were used as sandals for their horses' feet. A large number of archæologists,—at the head of whom are the Abbé Cochet,[1] M. Namur,[2] and Mr Roach Smith;[3] and several Continental veterinary surgeons, with others, Professors Reynal of Alfort,[4] and Defays of Brussels,[5] MM. Fischer of Cessingen,[6] and Bieler of Rolle[7] (Switzerland)—are of this opinion; while others again, as Professor Quicherat of Chartes, MM. Castan and Delacroix of Besançon,[8] Captain Bial[9] of the French Artillery, and M. Quiquerez of Switzerland, are opposed to them, and think that these articles could never have been intended for, or worn as, shoes or sandals. Mr Roach Smith, the eminent archæologist, appears at one time to have held a middle opinion on the subject: 'It has been supposed they were used as temporary shoes for horses with tender feet, and they have been called stirrups; but both these notions are unsatisfactory.'[10] Some of these so-called sandals have been found in Gallo-Roman and Frankish graves; many with Roman remains of various kinds, and others without any accompanying relics.

Though their forms are varied, yet it will be found

  1. Le Tombeau de Childéric I.
  2. Public, de la Soc. Archéol. du Luxemburg, vols. vii. p. 185 xi. p. 92.
  3. Collect. Antiq., vol. iii. p. 129.
  4. Journal Vét. de Belgique, 1853.
  5. Annales de Méd. Vétérinaire, 1867.
  6. Journal Vét. de Belgique, 1853.
  7. Journal de Méd. Vétérinaire de Lyon, 1857.
  8. Journal de Méd. Vét. Militaire, 1866.
  9. Megnin. Origine de la Ferrure.
  10. Catalogue of the Museum of London Antiquities, p. 77.