it must grow out, and be replaced by horn of an opposite character, and this is the way it is done. The disease may again be produced by the same course of action that first brought it on. When this is resumed, and the horse again begins to suffer, they say that he has never been cured.
Mayhew says: ‘Nothing can be practical if there be wanting the desire to embody particular directions.’ It is found that nearly every one who tries this course of treatment is inclined to have his horse exercised either in a field or on the grassy sides of the roads, instead of on the hard. This is a mistaken theory. On the grass the hoof receives too little friction or attrition. Mr. Douglas says: ‘From the moment a horse is foaled, we either keep him in grass fields soft to tread upon, or in warm stables standing upon soft straw, and then we are surprised that his hoofs should become dry and brittle, instead of keeping moist, tough, and hard. In the Orkneys, in the mountains of Wales, the wilds of Exmoor and Dartmoor, many parts of the continent of Europe, and in a considerable portion of the rest of the globe, horses run about over rocks, through ravines, and up precipitous ridges, unshod; yet all this is done without difficulty, and to the evident advantage of their hoofs, for these animals never suffer from contracted feet, or from corns, sandcracks, &c., until they become civilised and have been shod.’ Another writer, a Devonian, says: ‘Dartmoor is not a great wild flat, as many suppose; but, on the contrary, it is for the most part a continual
