peculiar structure of the crust (or wall), especially if they were likewise to imagine the tubes to be filled with a thick fluid, the use of which is to nourish and preserve them.’
If La Fosse had made a research of this kind, he would have perceived that, by his way of nailing, he was reducing the size of each tube by one-sixth; or, what is more probable, that he was entirely closing those nearest the nails, and compressing those that lie half way between each pair of nails. How, then, could the ‘thick fluid which is to nourish and preserve them’ circulate when it arrived at the nails? And what, therefore, was to nourish the prismatic-shaped portion that lies in front of the nails? In and around Rome, at the present day, horses are shod with his ‘lunette’ or tip, and many of them on the front feet only (the hind feet being entirely unshod); but they are generally fastened on with only three, or sometimes four, nails; and these are the only horses that can keep on their legs in the slippery streets of the city. For the benefit of strangers, that come on horseback from a distance, there are posted up notices, at the various points where paving commences, warning them to dismount at such points in case their horses should be fully shod. Those Englishmen who take any notice at all of the Roman horses’ feet, mostly ridicule the ‘barbarous’ way in which they are shod, and boast of the ‘splendid English shoeing.’ Some even consider it cruelty, and feel so strongly on the subject, that they refuse to hire the vehicles to which
