nails sustained the effects of contact with the ground, and were, in this way, economical. 2. They secured the animal wearing them a safe footing on the pavement, either in summer or winter.
No doubt, the early inhabitants of Gaul and Britain have testified to these advantages two thousand years ago.
M. Perrier, believing that the ordinary expansion theory was a fallacy, and that the supposed movement took place at the anterior part of the foot, introduced a method of shoeing which was intended to promote the toe and quarter resiliency. The hoof was pared as thin as possible at these parts, while the heels were permitted to grow strong. The shoe was very narrow in front, but wide and thick towards the ends of the branches. The method of shoeing appeared to be, in many respects, almost exactly the reverse of that in every-day use. Its trial appears to have been very brief and unsatisfactory.
Still more recently, M. Watrin attempted to modify the ordinary method of shoeing, though in a very unreasonable manner. His object appears to have been merely directed to prevent contraction of the heels; and we can scarcely doubt that the means by which he sought to attain that end were those most likely to induce this deformity. The sole was well pared, the frog and bars mutilated, the external quarter of the fore-foot was reduced to a lower level than the inner, though in the hind-foot it was the reverse. The shoe was that generally in use in France, only at the inner corner of each heel it had a clip that bent down and grasped the inner aspect of the bar. This shoe and
