such a chaussure. Always, however, out of respect for the opinion of others, we have never cast a doubt on the use of the socks for the Roman horses, because their employment for this purpose may have been one of those unfortunate essays of their military chiefs. Elsewhere in Switzerland, so few of these strap-shoes (fers à courroies) have been found, that it appears probable such a mode of shoeing, if it did exist, was for but a brief period. On the contrary, it is our conviction that long before the arrival of the Romans among the Gauls, the Sequaniæ, Helvetiæ, and Rouraks, in the vicinity of the Jura mountains, shod their horses as we now do. The almost total absence of calceæ ferreæ in our districts confirms this opinion; which is, it is true, in disaccord with that of some archæologists, who only introduce nail-shoeing in the Roman armies towards the 10th century of our era, and as an importation by the nations of the North.'[1]
And M. Delacroix, when describing the shoes found in Besançon, makes a similar protest against these articles being designated hippo-sandals. 'Modern science, in the face of ancient authors mentioning horse-shoes, thinks it ought to consider as such the objects whose use is as yet unknown, which are found in ancient roadways, and to which it has been imagined to give the name of hippo-sandals. The figure of some hippo-sandals might, justly or unjustly, have authorized such an explanation of their use; the collection of a tolerably large number of these articles, however, dispels the illusion. There are in the Archaeological Museum of Besançon hippo-sandals provided with long hooks before and behind, and even on
- ↑ Mem. de la Soc. d'Emulation du Doubs, p. 132, 1863.
