domesticated animal; and so long as we do not interfere with the proper functions of any part of its body (and the abomination of bearing reins and other such practices interfere with them grievously and even fatally), we bring it under no conditions which it was not designedly calculated to encounter. Private owners and companies whose horses must be numbered by troops are naturally irritated by the accidents constantly occurring on smooth and slimy pavements or on rough and hard stone or flint roads, and in their disgust they now offered rewards for the invention of a shoe which shall render the horse indifferent to the materials over which he has to pass, and have clamoured for a uniform system of pavements in all towns. It seems strange indeed that no misgiving seems to cross their minds that they are taking thought of the wrong surface, and that they are scared by false terrors when they dread the contact of the unshod hoof with sand, granite, flint, wood, or asphalte.

It cannot, indeed, be too often repeated or too strongly insisted on, that the foot of the horse in no way needs to rest on soft and yielding surfaces. The very opposite of this is the truth, and this truth was perceived as clearly by Xenophon as by the ablest physiologists of our own day. Speaking, as he says, not from theory, but from wide and varied experience, Xenophon insists that in order to ensure the healthiness of horses, stable floors must not be smooth or damp, that they should be lined with stones of irregular shapes, of much the same size as the animal's hoof, and that the ground outside the stable, on which it is groomed, should be covered in parts with loose stones laid down in large quantities, but surrounded by an iron rim to prevent their being scattered. Standing on these, the horse, Xenophon adds, will be in much the same condition as if he were travelling on a stony road, and as he must move his hoof when he is being rubbed down as much as when he is walking, the stones thus spread about will strengthen the frogs of his feet. It is not easy to repress a certain feeling of shame at the disingenuousness of modern writers who have tried to shirk the difficulty by saying that Xenophon had no knowledge of our hard roads. It is enough to reply that he speaks distinctly of roads covered with stones, and of the benefit which the horse derives from traversing them. There is not a word to justify a suspicion that he would have shrunk from the hardest roadway of modern times. Xenophon is thus in complete agreement with Lord Pembroke's remark that the constant use of litter in a stable makes the feet tender and causes swelled legs. In his judgment the bare stone pavement will cool, harden, and improve a horse's feet merely by his standing on it. Acting on the same principle, Vegetius, as Free Lance' remarks, holds that the floor of a stable should be made, not of soft wood, but of solid hard oak, which will make the foot of the horse as hard as a rock. It should surely be unnecessary to say that these writers make not the remotest reference or allusion to the shoeing of horses. It was impossible that they could notice a practice which was unknown to the ancient

world, and which is in truth simply a modern, as it is also a most uncalled for, barbarism. No iron helped to produce the heavy sound of solid horn which Virgil ascribes to the fiery steed of Pollux. Of late years we have heard much of the unjustifiable waste of time spent on classical literature which has no practical bearing on the interests of modern life. It is unfortunate that Xenophon's treatise on the management of horses has not formed one of the subjects for the upper forms of our public schools; and it would be well if they were made to read with care a book written by one who wrote unfettered by the restraints of any traditional system, and who successfully brought the cavalry as well as the infantry of the Cyreian army of Greeks from the plains of Babylon to the shores of the Euxine. There they would see how thoroughly the rules laid down by the leader of the Ten Thousand for the selection and the management of horses are in accordance with the highest scientific knowledge of the present day, and how happy an ignorance he displays of the long and dismal catalogue of diseases and miseries which a wrongheaded and ridiculous system has called into existence. No horses could be subjected to a more severe strain in every limb of their body than were those which Xenophon led from Cunaxa over the Armenian highlands to the walls of Trebizond; yet we hear nothing of any special difficulties arising from diseases of the foot or leg. It may probably be said with truth that the strain endured by those horses could be borne only by unshod animals. Paul Louis Courier, the French translator of Xenophon's treatise, was so struck by the apparent soundness of his method, that he put it to the test by riding unshod horses in the Calabrian campaign of 1807, and he did so with complete success. But that which with him was a voluntary experiment has been for others an involuntary necessity. This was the case with many of our cavalry horses during the Indian Mutiny, and their riders have declared that they were never better mounted in their lives. In the retreat of the French from Moscow the horses, 'Free Lance' remarks, lost all their shoes before they reached the Vistula; yet they found their way to France over hard, rough, and frozen ground. In his invasion of America, Cortes could not carry about with him the anvils, forges, and iron needed for shoeing even the small number of horses which he had with him. But these horses did their work and survived it, and from them comes the fierce mustang of Mexico, which still goes unshod. There is great force in the remark of Free Lance' that horses are not indigenous to America, this being their first introduction, and that climate and locality, therefore, have not that influence over the hoof which they are commonly supposed to have. The small horses of the irregular cavalry at the Cape, which took part in the battle of Ulundi, had no shoes on their hind feet, and few were shod even in front, but they held out longer and went miles farther than the shod animals; and no complaints were made of any of them falling lame, although, as "Free Lance' adds, sheets of wet slippery rock and rolling stones in river beds would be calculated to try the hoofs to the utmost.'

But it is scarcely necessary to cite more instances of the vast benefits which those who have had the courage to leave the feet of their horses as nature made them have received under the most varied conditions of work, of soil, and of climate. Humanity and self-interest here point in the same direction, and only folly of the most perverse kind will have the hardihood to fight for the maintenance of the existing system. The cruelties practised (whether unwittingly or wantonly) on the horse's foot have been extended over a series of generations, but the only penalty which remains to be paid for the ill-doing of years is the surrender of a few days or a few weeks of the labour of the animal which has been thus misused. On the other side, there is a certainty that we shall be entering on a course which will triple the length of time over which the efficiency of the horse will be extended, and which therefore will, within twenty years, have saved the nation a hundred and thirty-five millions sterling. It will further ensure the immediate saving of all the money now spent on farriery, and this saving, which must be at the least forty shillings a year on every horse, will amount to two millions and a quarter; and there will be the further saving in straw as well as on medicines, nostrums, and remedies no longer needed for animals rescued from a system which was a fruitful source of discomfort, disease, and death. The angry controversies which the subject is now constantly calling forth and exasperating will at the same time disappear. There will no longer be an outcry for uniformity in the system of paving towns, for horses will go as well on one kind of pavement as on another. There will no longer be querulous demands on inventors for the devising of a perfect shoe, because it will be clearly seen that this perfect shoe has been furnished already by nature, and that it is only human ignorance and conceit which has marred the work of God. We may now look back with some feeling of envious regret on the wiser, because more natural, methods of the ancient world; and future generations will look back with feelings of simple wonderment at the infatuation which could submit without a struggle to a system which doomed the horse to unnecessary disease and agony and to a premature death, while it deprived his owner of wealth often sorely needed for his own welfare and that of all depending on him. Of the ultimate issue there can be no doubt; but it is still the duty of Free Lance,' as of all whose eyes are opened to the mischiefs of the existing system, to fight the battle to the end.

GEORGE W. Cox.

IT

THE PROBLEM OF RAILWAY SAFETY.

T is now rather more than five years since public attention was invited, in the pages of this Magazine, to the frequent losses of life, and cases of personal injury, occurring in the conduct of our railway traffic. And it was pointed out that, as far as inference was attainable from the published accounts, the increase of death rate was attributable to the identical cause that was at the same time producing a steady decrease in the net earning power of lines that conveyed certain descriptions of traffic.

Since the date of the articles in question the process of the improvement of one class of railway property and the deterioration of the other class indicated, has steadily continued. Since 1874, the net earnings of the five principal passenger lines have advanced from the rate of 3.41 to that of 3.97 per cent. on the aggregate capital; while those of the four chief mineral carrying lines have decreased from an average of 5.34 to one of 4.82 per cent., calculated in the same manner. With regard to safety, not only had the proportion of the number of deaths to the passengers carried been reduced by one-half, but the actual number of accidents had decreased by onethird; while the number of train miles annually run had increased by II per cent., from 1874 to 1879. To the extension of the system of interlocking points and signals, from 44 to 71 per cent. of the total mileage, and to that of the block system, from 42 to 63 per cent., this increase of safety may beyond question be mainly attributed. There occurred, in the period cited, the trifling increase in gross receipts per mile of from 3,4597. to 3,4887. per annum. But already in the present year the rapidly succeeding occurrence of seven railway catastrophes, each of the first magnitude as regards mechanical gravity, although several were happily unattended by the loss of human life, has shown how far we are from having attained anything like security for travellers.

In the meantime the managers of our railways have steadfastly adhered to that which, if their policy be really indefensible, is the better part of valour. They have spent 107,000,000/. in adding 1,200 miles of railway to the 16,500 which were open in 1875, and in increasing the capital cost of each mile of line open from 37,000/. to 40,500l. The accompanying diminution of net earning power, according to the Board of Trade returns, is from 437 to 4:15 per cent. The chairmen of the half-yearly meetings have so far altered their language as to admit that the mineral traffic, which in 1875

they called the backbone of dividend, is on the contrary a poor paying' traffic. No official attempt, however, has been made to show that this trade is in any way remunerative. The admission made by the Board of Trade that the present returns are wholly inadequate to throw light on the real problem of railway working has been unattended by any results.

In the meantime separate and distinct echoes to our note of alarm have been returned from very different centres of intelligence -from Dublin, from Sydney, from Paris, and from Brussels. In Dublin, Mr. William Fleming, in four successive numbers of The Index to our Railway System,' has given an exhaustive analysis of the returns and accounts of the companies, so far as their form allowed. He has pointed out the absence of proper information; and he has drawn gloomy prognostics for the future, such as afford at least ample grounds for the demand for a proper reckoning. Mr. Rae, and his successor Mr. Goodchap, Commissioners of the Railways of New South Wales, have adopted our suggestions as to giving official details of the cost of working the different kinds of traffic; and have shown that out of every 1,000l. received for coal freight, at the price of one penny per ton per mile, the total net profit earned (without reference to interest on capital) is 267. on the Southern and Western Railway. The French Government have proposed and carried votes for the expenditure of a sum of 40,000,000l. sterling on the completion of the inland navigation of France, on the express ground that coal cannot be transported by railway, even for long distances, at a less cost than from 0.54d. to 062d. per ton per mile, while it can be transported by canal at 0.22d. per ton per mile. And the Belgian Minister of Public Works has brought before the Chambers a detailed report, pointing out that the carriage on the Belgian lines of traffic at inadequate prices, and the steady augmentation of the capital and debt of the railways, were tending to impose a crushing weight on the productive industry of Belgium.

Thus during the past five years the march of information and of argument has been decided, in the direction we ventured to anticipate. The advance of a portion of the English railway companies has been in the opposite direction. A recurrence of those casualties which, in the present state of affairs, must occur when a mixed traffic attains certain proportions, has afresh directed public attention to the subject. And the Queen herself has expressed the anxiety with which she has witnessed the recurrence of the old form of disaster, at the same time with the repeated occurrence of disasters of a new type, arising directly from one of the expedients adopted in order to facilitate the working of a mixed traffic.

Under these circumstances it may be expected that 'Fraser's Magazine' should afford some review of the main elements of the great problems of railway safety and of railway prosperity, especially calling attention to those facts which have been brought within the