Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/271

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OLD HORSE-SHOES.
243

The person who presented them to Mr Clark, says of the first shoe (fig. 80) that it was found upon the down on the opposite side of the road, at the distance of nearly half-a-mile from the place where the other shoe was found, under a heap of flints.

fig. 80

These flints, it is probable, were taken at some former period from the above spot, and were deposited upon the down, probably for mending the roads; for, from the perfect accordance and similarity of both these shoes, in their peculiar make and fashion, says Bracy Clark, and from other circumstances, there can be no reasonable doubt of their having been constructed at the same period, and in all probability belonged to the same animal, the one being a hind, and the other a fore shoe, and of nearly the same size. They had also perfectly similar nails. Being looked upon by the labourers who removed the flints as mere old iron, they were passed unnoticed by them, as they sometimes found in these localities Roman and other coins of some value.

fig. 81

Of the second shoe (fig. 81), he says it was found 'by the levelling of a bank, in Silbury Hill mead, for the purpose of watering it. The soil removed on this occasion was principally chalk, to the depth of a foot or