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.