from a ‘scoop-toed rolling-motion shoe,’ if there be anything in a name—which is to be doubted in this case at least. Another, the ‘centennial’ shoe, is described as follows: ‘This shoe is made of steel, and is well concaved on the ground surface. The bars are made so as to fit upon the bars of the foot, and bear weight as the unshod hoof does in a state of nature, preventing bruises in the heels and quarter cracks. I have tested this shoe on horses that were quite sore and lame, the shoe being made of cast steel, the bars being sprung down from the heel to their points on the ground surface about one half-inch; this will soften and mellow the jar. The shoe, being well tempered, will allow the bars to spring with the horse’s weight, and will be found one of the best devices possible to soften and relieve the effects of concussion when the horse is tender of foot, as well as to quicken the action in trotting, leaving the frog free and unimpeded to perform its important functions of cushioning the foot and shielding the sensitive parts from injury.’
It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to condemn by theory a shoe which one has not experimented upon; but if a small stone were to get jammed between the spring and the horse’s heel, would not the horse be as effectually ‘beaned’ as if an English coper had done it for him? What a contrast we find between the result of forty years’ research (as stated in the preface) of a farrier, and that arrived at by another American, Mr. Bowditch, a practical farmer, who found ‘four inches of iron curled round the toe’ to
