Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/168

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HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING.

(Meuse), amongst a heap of tiles with the characteristic border of the period, pottery, cinders, and fuel (fig. 21).

fig. 21

This shoe had eight holes, the wavy margin, and one of its sides so greatly expanded as to cover one-half the sole. This was no doubt a pathological shoe, intended to cover and protect an injured part of the foot, and perhaps also to retain some healing application. Its length is 5¼ inches, and width 4 inches.

In 1848, a shoe identical with the primitive model was found beside a coin of Trajan, in the foundation of a new hospital at Tonnerre, by M. Dormois, a distinguished archaeologist. And the Calvet museum contains a small, wide-covered shoe, with a triangular space between its branches. It was found in clearing away the theatre of Orange, in 1834, on a Roman pavement.

The remains of Celtic farriery have also been found in Switzerland. In the Canton Vaud, at Chavannes, is a mound named the hillock of Chatelard (motte de Chatelard), which M. Troyon, a learned Swiss antiquarian, believed to be a place for sacrifices, for on examining it he found nearly five hundred bones of animals. Among the iron articles discovered in this mound, there were spurs, bridle-bits, and horse-shoes. These last, five in number, are of small dimensions and very primitive workmanship. They have no calkins, and the holes, three on each side, have, as with the shoes of Alesia and elsewhere, distorted the sides of the metal. The nails are thicker in