When we consider the vast importance of security to the feet of that useful animal, the horse, we cannot but feel surprised that on account of the very rough roads the ancients must occasionally had to travel, that some metallic shoes had not been invented and introduced previously to the period when they appeared.

That the security of the rider necessarily depended upon the safety of the animal he rode, cannot be questioned. Hence, then, we do not wonder to observe, that the sagacious Aristotle and Pliny should remark upon the covering placed upon the feet of those animals of draught and burden. From what these authors have said, however, we dare not conclude that the feet of horses or camels were faced or shod with iron: but it should rather seem that in time of war, or on long journeys, the feet of both kinds of beasts were prepared with such species of shoes as the common people wore, and which were generally made of strong ox-leather. We are told that when the hoofs of cattle, particularly oxen, had sustained any injury or hurt, they were furnished with shoes made of Spanish or African broom, with which linen is often manufactured in the south of France and Italy; also shoes of some of the plants of the hemp kind, which were woven or plaited together. Although these may be considered as only a species of surgical bandages with regard to oxen; but such shoes were particularly given to mules, which in days of old were employed much more than at present for riding; and from some instances of immoderate extravagance in people of rank, it appears that they had for their animals very costly shoes of some of the most valuable metals. Nero, when he undertook short journeys, was drawn always by mules shod with silver, and those of his wife were shod with gold.

The circumstance being barely mentioned, without any particular detail, we are anxious to afford any certain information on the mode in which those shoes were constructed. From a passage in Dio Cassius, we have reason to believe that it was only the upper part of the shoe that was made of those costly metals, or that they were plaited from thin slips.

Xenophon relates that a certain people in Asia were in the habit of drawing socks over the feet of their horses, when the snow lay deep on the ground. The Kamschatkian employs the same means to preserve the feet of his dogs, which draw his sledge, or hunt the seals upon the ice. Those species of shoes, according to Captain Cook, are so ingeniously made as to be bound, and at the same time to admit the claws of the animal through them.

From a passage found in Suetonius, we may infer that the Roman horse-shoes were put on in the manner we have mentioned; for that author says, that the coachman of Vespasian once stopped to put on the shoes of his mules: this being the case, the probability appears pretty certain, that in deep roads and moist soils the animals must have frequently lost their shoes.

Artemedorus speaks of a shod horse, and uses the same kind of expression whilst speaking of other cattle. Winkelman has described a cut stone in the collection of Baron Stosch, on which is represented the figure of a man holding one foot of a horse, whilst another, kneeling, is employed in fastening a shoe.

That it was not usual to shoe the war-horse, may be gathered from this,—when Mithridates was besieging Cyzicus, he was obliged to send his cavalry to Bythnia, because the hoofs of the horses were entirely spoiled and worn out. Diodorus Siculus informs us, that Alexander, in his expedition, proceeded with uninterrupted marches, until the feet of his horses were entirely broken and destroyed. A like instance occurs in Cinnamus, where the cavalry were obliged to be left behind, because the horses had suffered considerably in their hoofs, to which he adds, they were often liable. Hence it may, perhaps, appear, that such horse-shoes as are now in use, were unknown to the ancients; and Chardiu gives no representation of them in ancient Persian antiquities. In the grave of Childeric, a northern chieftain and King of France, was discovered a piece of iron, which the learned antiquarians who saw it, pronounced, from that portion of it which the rust had left, to have been an old horse-shoe; they saw, or thought they saw, four distinct apertures for nails on each side; but whilst they were endeavouring to remove the corrosive excrescence of rust, to ascertain with more certainty, it broke under their hands. The reason why we mentioned this here is, that if the relic discovered was really a horse-shoe, it must have been one of the most ancient specimens known; because, we find that monarch died in the year 481; his grave was discovered at Tournay in 1683. The occasion of his having a horse-shoe in his grave, was from the creed of his religion; the superstitious belief of the Scandinavians taught them to place implicit confidence in the power of this amulet, to prevent the ingress of evil spirits. The remains of this belief is even now often seen in the obscure streets of the British metropolis; and, indeed, throughout the country, where the mystic shoe frequently appears as the faithful guardian of the domestic threshold.

It is, we understand, the opinion of the French historian, Daniel, that, in the ninth century, horses were not shod always, but only in the time of frost, and on some other very particular occasions.

The practice of shoeing horses was introduced into England by William I. We are told that this monarch gave the city of Northampton as a fief to a certain person, one of his attendants, in consideration of his paying a certain sum yearly for the shoeing of horses. And it is also alleged, that Henry, or Hugh de Ferres, or de Ferrers, was the same person who held this fief on the above condition, and who was the ancestor of the family of that name, and who still bear six horse-shoes in their coat of arms. This was the person whom William entrusted to inspect his farriers.

We should not omit to observe, that it is remarked, that horse-shoes have been found, with other riding furniture, in the graves of some of the old inhabitants of Germany, and also in those of the Vandals in the North of Europe.