ceasing to breed, I took her up and used her as a shepherd’s hack, where she had constant work for two years; and, in travelling from farm to farm, she had a considerable distance of hard road to traverse daily, yet she never required shoeing. In the summer of 1877 I purchased a farm horse which had had the misfortune to get a nail into its foot, and he had been under the farrier’s treatment for several months; but had made so little progress towards recovery, that I determined to try what Nature would do for him. I had his shoes taken off and turned him to pasture. In the spring of 1878, being still rather lame, I put him to work on the land; and he is now doing all sorts of farm work, including drawing manure from the town, and drags his load as well over hard pavement as any shod horse that I have. Whether he could stand constant work on hard roads I am unable to say; but he does all that I require of him, and the experiment is so satisfactory that I intend to put another horse through the same training.’
The ‘Lancet’ says:—‘As a matter of physiological fitness, nothing more indefensible than the use of shoes can be imagined. Not only is the mode of attaching them by nails injurious to the hoof; it is the probable, if not evident, cause of many affections of the foot and leg, which impair the usefulness, and must affect the comfort, of the animal.’ There is no dearth of complaints about horseshoes; but people still ‘cling so tenaciously to the favourite superstition’ of regarding them as ‘necessary evils,’
