travelling upon artificial roads, we cannot discuss in this place. Certain it is, however, that in countries where horses are unshod, these diseases are rare, if not altogether absent.
In North Carolina, for instance, at a former period, horses did not wear shoes; and it has been asserted that they did not then suffer from the diseases of the feet and legs they now do.[1]
In mentioning this, however, we must take into account the fact that unshod horses do not always perform the same amount of severe labour, or undergo such long-continued exertion, and that there are generally no hard roads.
We can understand, nevertheless, how improper shoeing may induce diseases of this kind. Look at the horse which has been shod upon 'improved principles,' whose hoofs have been pared according to the directions given in some of the standard treatises on shoeing! He is not exactly lame—he is not quite a cripple—but is only tender in his feet. His soles have been 'thumb-tested,' to prove that they were thin enough; the miserable shred of horn remaining, and into which thousands of the most beautiful sensitive villi pass, is rapidly shrinking on these minute processes; in doing so it squeezes them painfully and unrelentingly, each in its narrow tube, as in a closing vice. The surface of the sole feels hot as fire, and the animal stands resting, first one foot, and then the other, showing symptoms of general uneasiness. What would the poor brute not give to get
- ↑ Darwin. Animals and Plants under Domestication. Brichell. Nat. Hist, of North Carolina, 1793.
