ance to the conquering armies of Greece and Rome, was yet, it seems, unknown to them. Of this, in their writings, we have apparently ample evidence.
We have similar injunctions and observations with regard to the care and quality of the hoofs, and to their being uncovered, as well as to the injuries sustained in travelling, as we had from the Greek writers. No author mentions metal plates for horses' hoofs fastened on with nails.
Pliny (A.D. 60) is very minute and circumstantial in his history of discoveries, and in other portions of his writings. He tells us that Tychius, the Boeotian, first invented or taught the art of making shoes for the feet of men, and enumerates many other discoverers; but nothing whatever as to the invention or employment of horse-shoes, though he speaks of the introduction of bridles and saddles by Pelethronius, and the people of Phrygia as being the first to use chariots. With regard to the camel, however, he follows Aristotle closely in his description of that animal's foot, and the way in which it was then protected: ‘The camel has pastern bones like those of the ox, but somewhat smaller, the feet being cloven, with a slight line of division, and having a fleshy sole, like that of the bear; hence it is, that in a long journey the animal becomes fatigued, and the foot cracks, if it is not shod {calceatu).’[1]
The term employed by the Roman naturalist to
- ↑ Hist. Naturalis, lib. xi. cap. 106. ‘Camelo tali similes bubulis, sed minores paulo. Est enim bisculus discrimine exiguo pes imus, vestigio carnoso, ut ursi; qua de causa in longiore itinere sine calceatu fatiscunt.' Edit. Gabriels Brotier. London, 1826.
