298
HORSE-SHOES.
junceum, or Spanish or African broom, with which linen isoften manufactured in the south of France and Italy ; alsoshoes of some of the plants of the hemp kind, which werewoven or plaited together. Although these may be consi-dered as only a species of surgical bandages with regard tooxen; but such shoes were particularly given to mules,which in ancient days were employed much more than atpresent for riding; and from certain instances of immode-rate extravagance in people of rank, it appears that they'had for their animals very costly shoes of some of thenoblest metals. Nero , when he undertook short journeys,was drawn always by mules shod with silver, 3 and those ofhis wife, Eoppaa, were shod with gold. 4
The circumstance being barely mentioned without anydefinite detail, we are anxious to all'ord any certain infor-mation on the mode in which those shoes were constructed.From a passage in Dio Cassius , there appears to lie somereason to conceive that it was the upper part only that wasmade of those noble metals, or that they were plaited fromthin slips. 5
Xenophon also relates in De Cyri Min. Expedit. p. 228,that a certain people in Asia were in the habit of drawing-socks over the feet of their horses when the snow lay deepon the ground; or, he adds, they would have sunk up totheir bellies in the snow, which must have been when it wasfrozen to prevent their slipping; for we are unacquaintedwith any thing but snow-shoes which could have sustainedthem upon the surface. The Karatschatkian employ s the samemeans to preserve the feet of his dogs which draw his sledgeor catch his seals upon the ice. Those species of shoes, itappears from Captain Cook ’s last voyage, are so ingeniouslymade as to be bound, and at the same time to admit theclaws of the animal through them.
Arrian , in Commentar. in Epictehnn, enumerates shoesamong the necessary riding-furniture for an ass.
From a passage found in Suetonius , we' may infer thatthe Roman horse-shoes were put on in the manner we havementioned; for that author says, that the coachman of \ es-pasian once stopped to put on the shoes of his mules : thisbeing the case, the probability appears pretty certain, thatin deep roads and moist soils the animals must have fre-quently lost their shoes.