state of brittleness of the hoof: intelligence alone can decide the degrees. Ni tanto, ni tan poco. The advice offered by a ‘Cavalry Officer’ is about as good as any, and the excellent remark of ‘Impecuniosus,’ that ‘it is the shoe, and not the road that hurts, the horse,’ contains the gist of the whole thing in fewer words than any other writer has been able to put it. Unfortunately, he did not arrive at the point of doing away with iron altogether; but he went on cutting it down in every dimension, until he found that the less of it there was the better he got on; and then he imparted the result of his experience to a public that had not sufficient capacity to take it in.
The more simple the means offered, the less reliance a horsey public is inclined to place in them. There is always existing a latent hope that some extra-scientific invention may spring up, which will conquer all difficulties. There is no use in waiting for it. Nature cannot, and will not, be superseded by the puny intellect of man, when it is a question of treating a living structure, which is so admirably constructed as to make the very idea of improving its construction ludicrous. Everyone may give up all hopes on this score; and the best thing to be done is to travel on the ‘back-track,’ and meet Mother Nature at the point where they failed to detect her finger-post. The travel on the back-track necessitates only the inversion of weeks to unfold the errors of centuries; and thrift is always on the right side. What more can be asked for?
