Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/178

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HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING.

to add a few nails more than were really present. The monument possesses many points of interest besides that pertaining to our subject, particularly in the curious hornlike appendages to the collars, which are worn on mules in the south of France at the present day.

Having called M. Megnin's attention to this monument, he obtained two delineations of the subject from Avignon, and in a paper referring to these, which was read in Paris in October last, he says that the most superficial fore-foot in the group is undoubtedly shod, three clenches being very visible, and that these stand at unequal heights on the wall of the hoof.[1] This number exactly agrees with that observed in the shoes found in the ground, and surmised to belong to these early days. Of course, in copying details, unless the artist is also well acquainted with the subject of shoeing, he is apt to show a clench or two more or less.

M. Megnin, than whom there could not be a better authority, entertains no doubts whatever as to this chariot team being shod. Like myself, he has for some years examined all the equestrian statues and bas-reliefs within reach, but without discovering anything to prove that the Romans or Greeks shod their quadrupeds. The only approach to this he could perceive, was in a galvano-plastic copy of Trajan's column, in the Louvre, in which, at the top of the ensign of a Roman cohort, was an object resembling a horse-shoe with seven nail-holes. He con-

  1. Recueil de Méd. Vétérinaire, November, 1868, p. 242. 'On voit très distinctement dans les deux dessins le pied de devant le plus en dehors ferré avec trois rivets très visibles, et, entre parenthèses, passablement en musique.’