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Show AN ARGUMENT AGAINST horse-shoeing.-To Fraser's Magazine for December Sir George W. Cox contributes and article in which he estimates that the English custom of horse-shoeing costs the nation annually as much as $15,000,000, which might be saved if the horses were allowed to go unshod. He quotes authorities from Xenophone, who marched his horses unshod from ?? over the Armenian Highlands to the walls of Trebizond, down to the "free lancers" of the present day; and contends that it is safer, cheaper and better to let horses go unshod over the hardest roads, and especially in the slippery streets of London. He estimates that over twelve million dollars would be saved in farriers' bills alone; and he calculates further that the working life of a horse would be doubled by the change, so that a horse which is now worn out at twelve years would live to twenty-six. It is to be feared that the noble author, like other people addicted to hobby riding, is given to exaggeration. |