constant work they have had naturally keeps them devoid of superfluous flesh; but, for all this, they are as hard as nails, and good in the wind.’ All through the reports on the war, not a complaint was made as to these horses falling lame. Surely there must be something in this. Sheets of wet, slippery rock, and rolling stones in river beds, would be calculated to try the hoofs to the utmost; yet in the pursuit of the Zulus, when they fled at Ulundi, these ‘ponies’ (from 14½ hands downwards) were able, we are told, to follow miles further than the shod horses.
Military farriers are no better than others. In fact, it does not appear, even in the army, that any previous knowledge is thought necessary to make a man a farrier, any more than it is generally supposed necessary to get the consent of an eel to his being skinned alive. Mr. Douglas says: ‘With facts before me, is it a wonder that I should blame the bad shoeing smiths of the army for much, if not most, of the mischief; the once tailors, haberdashers, colliers, and clodhoppers, but now farriers, who first lame the horses until they are unable to walk, and then are cast and sold for a few pounds? In my own regiment, the 10th Hussars, just before it went out to India, out of fifteen farrier sergeants and shoeing smiths, there were only the farrier-major and two others that had been farriers before they joined the army. One of the remaining twelve had been bred a tailor, and, as a tailor, had worked for the regiment; a second had been a
