wards against its will, until the fore and hind feet slipping in the same direction, it came down upon its left side with a crash. The thought of what agony that poor beast must have suffered, even before it fell, has haunted me ever since, and knowing if the horse had been able to use the supple elastic cushion nature has provided its feet with to prevent their slipping—namely, the frog—it could easily have controlled the pressure from behind, I resolved if possible to direct public attention to the present cruel and unwarrantable system of shoeing horses.’
His book is full of valuable remarks on the horse’s foot and on the evils of shoeing as commonly practised; but he missed the mark in failing to recognise (even supposing that the shoe he proposes might not admit of so much slipping) that the horse would still injure his feet and legs by the immense strain put on them in his violent exertions to hold back the waggon—a work that should be done for him. Perhaps he was not acquainted with the brake, and was labouring under the delusion that all that mechanical skill could effect towards the breaking of momentum by friction had been done by making one wheel skid. Mayhew, in the chapter which he dedicates to ‘strain of the flexor tendon,’ says that ‘this is chiefly present in the shaft horse that has to descend a steep declivity, with a load behind it. The weight would roll down the descent; this the horse has to prevent, and the chief stress is then upon the back tendons.’ Elsewhere he states
