or amble, mentions 'tramels, heavy shoes, pasternes of lead, and shoes of advantage' being used on the hind limbs, 'to keep the hinder parts of the horse down, and to cause his hinder feete strike further forward within his fore parts.' The 'shoe of advantage' was the most dangerous; as the projections or plates at the toe struck the tendons of the fore-legs and seriously injured them. For the coursers, the day before racing, the hoofs were to be shod, 'but let them be such shooes as shall be best agreeing to the race; which if it bee a soft moore or swarth, let them be but thinne plates, or halfe shooes (like a halfe moone), but if it bee hard and gravelly, let them be whole shooes, but yet so light as is possible.'
Markham's principal work on farriery and horsemanship[1] contains little beyond what Blundevil had stated in the previous century; but in a smaller treatise[2] we have some examples given of the condition of horses' feet, and the attention they received. For 'foundering, frettizing, or any imperfection in the feet or hoofes of an horse,' he gives the following directions for the treatment of the unfortunate creature's extremities: 'First pare thin, open the heels, and take good store of blood from the toes, then tack on a shooe, somewhat hollow.' The sole was then to be filled up with all kinds of fantastic compounds. In a later edition of this treatise (1647) he omits the 'good store of blood:' 'First pare thinne, open the heels wide, and shooe large, strong, and hollow.'
The agony the poor horses must have suffered on a
