will be in the space between two paving-stones. Two things clearly follow from what I have said—that it may happen that the tendon achillis sustains all the different degrees of violence that can be imagined, from total rupture to the smallest abrasion of its fibres, which will cause the horse to go lame; and it is on the frog alone that all these different degrees depend, as has been demonstrated more particularly in the history of fracture of the navicular bone and the anatomy of the foot.'
After enumerating all the objections urged against his rational method of shoeing, and replying to them, he concludes: 'My new shoeing, I repeat, has nothing to oppose it but prejudice; anatomy, which has made known to me the structure of the foot, has demonstrated all its advantages, and experience has fully confirmed them.'
I regret extremely that our limits forbid my translating at greater length from this splendid monograph; but I hope that I have been able to some extent to show that Lafosse's ideas on shoeing were founded on sound anatomical and physiological principles, the result of close observation and experience. And yet they appear to have made but little progress in the face of the opposition offered by ignorant grooms and farriers, who were incompetent to understand anything but the mere everyday routine of the rapidly degenerating art; and the prejudice of those amateur horsemen who, though the last perhaps to take upon trust statements relative to other matters, would yet believe everything told them by these horse attendants and shoers. The farriers of Paris, indeed, unanimously protested against the innovation two years
