one; but he says: ‘My friend, who gave me the pattern of this shoe, remarked that the opposition of the smiths at Melton to it must be seen to be appreciated, and that the same might be said of most of the grooms.’ This is the old, old tale. Later on he found that the three-quarter shoe had been with advantage reduced in length until it became simply a tip. Following his usual course, he adopted this improvement, and liked it better still. Nor is this to be wondered at, for expansion and contraction had now got very nearly their own way, frog pressure and sole pressure being similarly favoured, and each horse was left to find and use nearly his own individual natural ‘tread,’ with which the four inches of iron at the toe did not much interfere, and those that had before ‘cut’ or ‘brushed’ gave over doing so. Corns disappeared, as there was no pressure on them; and many of his horses, which had incipient side bones, were entirely cured of them. Of course, when once the cartilage is turned into bone, nothing can reconvert it into cartilage. He says: ‘Nothing makes the heels grow so fast as the wearing of tips; with them snow does not ball in the foot; with every other shoe it does so, more or less.’ This is very sensible and comprehensible; it arises from nearly copying Nature. Still the ‘crowd’ refused to believe that the horse’s sole could be safely brought down to direct and immediate contact with the ground, even when told by this gentleman that ‘one of the most eminent of our veterinary surgeons (Mr. Stanley, of Leamington)
