Stereoplea: or, the artificial defence of the horse's foot considered. Also hints for rearing young colts, sound and with good feet / [Bracy Clark].

  • Clark, Bracy, 1771-1860.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Stereoplea: or, the artificial defence of the horse's foot considered. Also hints for rearing young colts, sound and with good feet / [Bracy Clark]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    found perfectly futile and useless in actual practice; on the other hand, how often are pleasant effects produced from causes we should have little suspected. This I mention in order that we should not, in the pride of reasoning, lean too con- fidently upon it. And equally we see men of uninstructed minds turn away from things which their reason could not embrace, and revert again to old practices, though always in the end experiencing their ill effects. This I am induced to mention, to encourage a disposition to receive charitably, and with good purpose, such improvements as have been tried and approved by experienced persons. For it is true that for centuries a strange fear and mysteriousness has prevailed over this art of shoeing, which one single, solitary principle, that of the elasticity of the foot, is soon likely to dissipate; and which appears as necessary to be understood by the shoer, as the alphabet by the man of letters, or the gamut by the musician. To render this description more complete, of making the shoe, we shall here briefly enumerate the different kinds now in general use, with figures of them, and the views and intentions of their proposers, adding thereunto our own remarks. Observing, that this circle or band of iron, called a shoe, will admit of endless va- riety in its form, and the figure given to its surfaces, and the quantity of material employed of length and of breadth, &c.; and which differences have been often strangely mistaken and dignified with the appellation of “ different principles of shoeing,” though it is evident the very same principle pervades them all; for how- ever varied, if it has no motion, it is still the same inflexible iron ring, bound to the foot by nails, driven somewhat diagonally through the lower parts of the hoof, and more or less restraining its movements. Caprice may vary these circumstances without end, and the principle be not at all affected by it; observing only in doing it this one essential condition, that the iron touch not or approach too near the sole. This apprehension of a difference of principle in these changes has tended strangely to confuse and bewilder the subject. In working up old Shoes, or such as have been worn out, one and the half of another usually serves to make a new shoe, the half is laid on one side of the entire shoe, which is then turned or lapped over it, and they are welded into one mass, the middle of the quarter of the old shoe forming the toe of the new shoe. The hind shoes are in general thus made of the old shoes, not requiring the same re- gular and neat work as the fore shoes. The Racing or Plate-Shoe, is a thin ring of iron, just wide enough to defend the wall of the hoof and carry the perforations for the nails, and with the hind