there is some chance for the hounds. These crowds, the too thickly planting of gorse coverts, and turning down foreign foxes, who have deteriorated the breed, have caused a decline of sport in the fashionable counties. But this is by no means the case elsewhere, thank Heaven! There are districts where wild foxes are still found, and good runs shown, and the goddess of the chase, driven from the fairer portion of her realms, yet smiles on many a rural district where as ardent followers of the sport greet each other as ever assembeld at a Leicestershire fixture. Difficulties there certainly are, in the shape of the larger amount of stock kept now than formerly, and the extra work done in the fields, causing foxes to be oftener headed, but these are not insurmountable. The remedy that can restore the chase to its pristine vigour, and keep these large, unruly fields in order, and the only one that will achieve these desirable ends, is the accession to power of men who are thoroughly up to their business as masters of hounds-men who know how the thing should be done, and will have it carried out. These are few and far between, and their stern rule may for a time be unpopular, until its beneficial results become apparent. But if hunting is to become what it formerly was, it must be in the hands of such men as these; and, moreover, it cannot be done in a year or two; it requires the right man got into the right place, and that he should. stick there. With masters who know what is what the wild galloping system of hunting hounds would soon be abandoned; and when they are again allowed to exercise the faculty, we shall soon see our present race of foxhounds hunt as low a scent as their ancestors. Thanks to the hereditary packs, the blood still flows good and pure as ever, and with them hunting is still to be seen in all its beauty. While the Rallywood blood is yet to be seen on the Lincolnshire wolds, or the matching tans race their fox across the Belvoir pastures, while the badger pied ones rest on the Badminton tenches, or the grey Cromwells are seen amongst the live hunters at Berkeley Castle, we need not fear for our race of foxhounds. And have we not a Tailby and a Thomson, of standard fame in the Midlands as really scientific masters of hounds? Has not the blood of Ports mouth and Poltimore become famous in the Far West? and are not Lord H. Bentinck's old favourites fallen into hands that are sure to do them justice, and keep up the Burton prestige? With numerous young ones, who have within this year or two taken to handle the horn themselves, and some very promising aspirants there are amongst them, we need fear no decline in the ranks of our gentlemen huntsmen. Altogether we may look forward hopefully, despite present drawbacks, and once get the battue system into disrepute, a great step to the advancement of fox-hunting would be gained.

everything else, the chase has internal abuses, as well as external foes to contend with, and real sport, such as our fathers loved, will not be obtained until hounds are allowed to hunt, and men ride after them instead of the fox.

VOL. XVI.NO. 107.

H

N.

THE SHOEING OF HORSES.

'POPULUS vult humbuggi, et humbuggendus est ;' and perhaps in no branch of the veterinary art, rife as it is with deception and trickery, has more quackery been prevalent than in that little piece of handicraft known as farriery,' or 'horse-shoeing.' Every age has had its inventor, who, in nine cases out of ten, has turned out to be little better than a charlatan-a polite term for impostor. At first sight it would appear that the application of a suitable shoe to a horse's foot was a feat not difficult of accomplishment, yet the contrary is the fact; and until quackery or specialism in horse-shoeing is abolished, and common sense is allowed to prevail, there is little hope that the condition of horses' feet will be ameliorated.

We are led to make these remarks in consequence of a pretended new system of shoeing having been foisted upon the gullible English public, and which system has met with much patronage and puffery, but which system' or 'method' is no new one at all, as we shall proceed to prove. It has been said that there is nothing new under the sun; but we believe we have seen a few novelties in horseshoeing. We are old enough to remember Professor Coleman's 'method' of shoeing horses. The 'Professor's' shoe was a novelty, certainly, the like of which had never been seen on earth before; if it had, all traces of such an implement had perished. It was a sioping shoe, and was three times as thick at the toe as at the heel, consequently the hoof of the animal had to be pared away to make room for the Professor's' invention. The Professor's reputation brought the shoe into considerable notice, and for some time the shoe was much used-more to its inventor's profit than to his reputation. The poor horses suffered, but the Professor lined his pockets. Then that puritanical little prig, Mr. Bracy Clark, thought there was a good opening for him, and he invented a shoe, or claimed to have invented one; for his enemies—and he had several-asserted that his hinge shoe was no invention at all, but was to be seen in every farrier's forge before little Bracy was born. Mr. Clark first of all tried for several years, but unsuccessfully, to prove that shoes were not even necessary at all. It was all in vain. He then waged war against nails, and declared that shoes could be fixed on horses' feet without nails. He contrived several plans for fixing shoes on without nailing. He did not meet with much success in that line. He then invented' the shoe which he wished to be known as the Bracy Clark shoe,' the invention of which he claimed as a great discovery, which would form a basis for the repose of the profession. The shoe was a common-shaped one, with a hinge-joint at the toe. It went down for a while; then a Mr. Rotch, not to be outdone, invented a shoe in several pieces, held together only by a piece of leather in the shape of a shoe, to which the bits of iron were riveted. There was almost a war-a very fierce paper war certainly took place-between the advocates of Mr. Rotch's plan

and Mr. Clark's. Indeed, a sort of triangular duel took place; for there was a 'French system,' which had numerous advocates, and the partisans waxed very warm. Death to one of the parties or to one of the systems was impending, when Mr. Goodwin, the king's veterinary surgeon, very adroitly trailed a red herring across the path of the disputants, and he invented' a shoe entirely unlike any of the others, but with extraordinary merits of its own. The old antagonists forgot their quarrel, joined together, and made common cause against the interloper. Nor was Mr. Goodwin's method' invulnerable. Though admirable in many respects, its great objection lay in the fact that it was convex on the foot surface; still it was a vast improvement upon the other methods. It was subsequently brought into disrepute by cast-iron shoes on Mr. Goodwin's method being introduced, whether at Mr. Goodwin's suggestion or not we are unable to say with any confidence. But at any rate the cast-iron shoes were extensively used, and on the London pavement, as might have been expected, many horses came down, broke their knees or legs, and the shoes got the blame, and fell into bad odeur. It would be wearying to trace the art of horse-shoeing through all its phases and grades for the last quarter of a century, and most of our readers must be familiar with innumerable innovations and so-called improvements. The last novelty' is a characteristic one, certainly. For the last month the Londoners have been edified by an exhibition in a shop-window in the Strand of a pair of shoes which were invented' and manufactured' by Professor Gamgee, for the express purpose of being applied to the famous stallion Newminster, who had suffered from crippled feet for years. There can be no doubt whatever of the originality of Professor Gamgee's invention; nothing of the kind was ever seen before in the shape, size, or weight of horseshoes. At the very least they must weigh 2 ibs. each--an astounding amount of iron to apply to the foot of a permanent cripple! But their astonishing weight dwarfs into insignificance when we contemplate their unique shape! We dare not attempt to describe them; for an accurate description of them would appear so like a frenzied piece of hyperbole that it would be discredited. These shoes must be seen for their existence to be believed in. But this by the way of introduction to the most recent piece of quackery in horse-shoeing. The Goodenough horse-shoe' is now all the rage, and we are assured that it will very speedily become universal. We have no objection to the shoe itself; the question is, is it an invention or not?-and our opinion is that it is not. The Goodenough 'patent,' so far as we can make it out, consists in the fact that preservation of the crust of the foot and of the frog is essentially necessary. The one is not to be pared away till the sensitive frog is exposed, nor the other rasped off so as to weaken the hoof. But surely there is nothing new in all this, and most assuredly there is nothing new in the shoes themselves. In a book entitled 'Notes on the Shoeing of Horses, by Lieut.-Colonel Fitzwygram,' published by Smith, Elder, and Co., in 1861, the whole anatomy of the

hoof of the horse is fully discussed and displayed; and the author enlarged at considerable length upon the necessity of keeping the hoof as much as possible intact, and in one short sentence he denounced the prevalent practice of paring down the frog. He said (page 12), 'The frog must not be touched, except so far as to remove any decidedly ragged parts.' But the Colonel's book, which is only a small one, is so full of maxims, and is so pregnant with meaning and instruction that we commend it to the notice of our readers, or we might quote from every page of it in confutation of the notion that the Goodenough method is any novelty at all. There may be a trifling difference in detail between the Goodenough method and that named by Colonel Fitzwygram; but the principle is the same in both. The Colonel recommends shoes turned up at the toe, and the Company' make them with calkins, or what they call calks; but the calks or protuberances on the ground surface of the shoe wear down in the course of a few days, and are of little or no value; indeed, on the shoes for the hind feet we deem them to be decidedly objectionable, more especially for hunters.

If we recollect rightly, a 'Mr. Goodenough' very kindly did the Barnum business for Rarey, when that celebrated charlatan was pursuing his calling' in this country. Goodenough 'farmed' Rarey, as Barnum farmed Tom Thumb; and he found the game a paying one. A 'Goodenough Company,' therefore, has been formed, not for the purpose of teaching their grandmother how to suck eggs, but to instruct John Bull in the humane method' of shoeing his horses. We have little doubt that the company will flourish; for England is full of flats, who will swallow anything that comes from across the Atlantic.'

J. H. S.

PARIS SPORT AND PARIS LIFE.

MOST respected, and, I trust, respectable reader, I beg leave to wish you a very happy new year. May your shadow never grow less-unless, indeed, you are banting,' or wish to ride a steeple-chase-may you have good sport, and all of you have the best of it' in every 'best thing of the season' (this is, I think, usually had once a week, and with the 'very same fox you found 'last Wednesday was a fortnight'). May your horses stand sound at Melton, and training at Newmarket; may your book' afford a pleasant study; may your appetite be good, and your dinners better; may your champagne be as dry' as is the last edition of Pommery and Grenot, your claret acrid and plentiful; may you all take in 'Baily,' and, in a word, I say, I wish you many happy returns of the January number. In Paris, this same New Year's Day is not a thing on which to congratulate oneself. No! Wise people flee from the city of Lutetia on that festive occasion, and take refuge in England, or 'fly south,' like swallows. You see, you must give everybody you know something, from a brougham and pair (this to Mdlle. de la Cançanière) down to a box of bon-bons. Nothing is too hot or too heavy to 'present' and receive' on the 'Jour de l'An,' With a large acquaintance this gets mono,

tonous at last! And then there are the other members of society, who are kind enough to pretend to attend to our wants for an annual stipend and their wine, each of them must be fee'd; also the tradespeople's boys, who never bring home anything when they say they will; also the tradesman, his wife, his children, and I really believe, if he had a stranger within his gates, you would have to give him five francs. Every waiter at every restaurant, the postman, who for eleven months out of the twelve has let your letters and papers deliver themselves, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-cleaner, all come together to get 'cent sous' on the first day of the New Year. Then you have to expend halfpence, till the gross sum is considerable, in five-sou stamps, which you put on small envelopes, into which you put cards, and send them off open to everybody you have ever seen, getting back in return bushels of pasteboard! It is the beginning of the 'season,' though, and so the Parisians put up with the present inconvenience, remembering the approaching rapture! Another season! Lord! how easily people are

amused!

The shooting at Compiègne has been excellent this year, and every kind of game has increased since last year in a proportion which speaks up highly for the keepers. Poaching is not, however, very serious round Compiègne, and they have an army of watchers. They have shot about eight times, and killed about 16,000 head. The 'hunting' has been very much what it always is-a pretty sight, and the less said the better about sport. The last day was a regular lawn meet,' and a good many strangers went down. Among those best known in London was Mr. H. Poole, on one of the Emperor's horses. There was also present an 'Amazone,' who, when it comes to riding, can beat all the others into fits! Considering her recent death and burial, she looked and went well. It is all over now, unless any true sportsman likes to go down to Compiègne and see the Marquis de l'Aigle hunt the wild boar. The Court has returned to Paris, and so we may say, on we go again. As yet there is but little 'Life,' and for 'Sport' I fear we must wait till the spring.

I regret to say that there seems no chance of Captain William Barrow returning, as I hoped, for the beginning of the racing season. He is a great loss to the sport itself; and then we have horribly selfish regrets for lost déjeuners, long cigars, and the drive down behind the best coachman and the neatest team in Paris. Yes; we do regret Captain Barrow-ain't we goodhearted fellows? The Duke of Hamilton and Mr. Crawshaw (still with his arm in a sling) are gone yachting to the Mediterranean. Lord Charles Hamilton is going to winter here, and has just brought over a pair of phaeton horses, bought of Major Wombwell, in Ireland, which are the best things out. Apropos, we are leaving off horses, and taking to Velocipedes, which are very small feeders, and never lame. Every afternoon there is a regular tournament in the 'Street of John Gudgeon,' where a school for those who cannot run alone has been established. Among the most promising pupils are the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Charles, and Mr. Wombwell. They get on nicely. Mr. Sloane Stanley has also been in training, but in a private stable, taking his gallops by himself. His performance is perhaps rather (to borrow a phrase from the Bourse) à la baisse, and he has met with many reverses; but fidelis ad finem' ('I'll stick on at last '-free translation, if he will excuse it) is his motto, and so, Antæus-like, he gets up better after every fall, to the delight of everybody, for he is much too cheery a boy to be hurt. Paris begins to look lively; but now we are confined to our native liveliness and the very few English residents. Those great families which posted from