plished the whole distance of twenty-two English miles in eighteen hours. . . . . We had not gone half-a-mile from Schleswig before we found a very heavy piece of siege artillery forsaken on the road. The eight horses which dragged it had become, owing to the state of the roads, as powerless as so many new-littered kittens, and all the efforts of the men to share the work with them were unavailing. In the same manner, as we advanced on our dismal march, we, who were in the rear, came up with broken carriages, dismounted caissons, and horses fallen never to rise. The obstruction to our progress was indescribable.'
These examples will, perhaps, be sufficient to illustrate the influence this art has in maintaining the efficiency of armies, and what grave calamities may ensue when, for lack of foresight, or through carelessness, its most essential details are neglected, and the chief part of an expedition is left helpless at the most trying emergencies. For what, asks M. Bouley, can be more discouraging or painful to an army in retreat, than to leave behind its weak, sick, and wounded men, and its guns, ammunition, baggage, and provisions, to be destroyed by the weather, or to fall into the hands of perhaps a merciless enemy, when some simple device, suitable to the occasion, would have saved all?
It is fortunate that, in modern times, instances of public inconvenience occasioned by want of shoeing are remarkably rare in the annals of civil life, for it does not require much to prove how greatly the every-day routine of commerce is dependent upon horses, and therefore upon horse-shoes. Only think for a moment
