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Horseshoe,  
Carlisle 
   
A very ancient horse-shoe was recently found, embedded in  
solid clay, four feet deep, in Mr. Cowen's brick-field, on  
the banks of the Eden, near Carlisle, a little beyond where  
the Roman wall crossed that river. It is of an extraordinary 
size, weighing no less than twenty-eight ounces. There were  
originally thirteen nails in it, extending all round the  
front, eight of which still remain in an almost perfect  
state. It is much wider than the modern shoe; and the hollow 
is filled up by a thick plate of iron, as if destined to  
protect the foot of the horse from the spikes used in  
ancient warfare, and continued down to the Border contests,  
in order to check the operations of cavalry. The situation  
in which it was found, buried so deep in pure clay, implies  
an antiquity much greater than the period of the  
moss-troopers, or the wars of the Bruces and the Edwards. 
  
PHILO. 
  
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