have the starting-point of suppurating corn, or necrosis of
the lateral cartilage--in other words, cartilaginous quittor.

Commonly accompanying quarter-crack is the condition of contracted heels
and atrophied frog. Sometimes described as a complication of sand-crack, it
appears to us more rational to rather regard the sand-crack as a result or
complication of the vice of contraction.

The overlapping of the edges of the crack before referred to occasionally
gives rise to the condition known as false quittor. A probe or a director
passed beneath the overhanging ledge of horn reveals sometimes a fissure of
1 inch or considerably more in depth, and quittor is diagnosed. A careful
paring away of the overhanging horn, however, reveals the true state of
affairs, and exposes to view the original cause of the mischief--a simple
fissure in the wall.

A serious complication--one fortunately met with but rarely--is that of
keraphyllocele. This is a tumour-like growth of horn, varying in size from
the thickness of an ordinary quill pen to that of one's middle finger,
growing down from the coronary cushion, and attached to the inner side of
the wall of the hoof. With this lameness is always present, and more or
less deformity of the hoof results. This condition will be found described
at greater length in Chapter IX.

_Prognosis_.--In the case of sand-crack this should always be guarded. It
may be taken as a general rule that cracks commencing from the coronary
margin are more troublesome to deal with than those originating below. The
reason is not far to seek. They here affect the wall just where the bevel
in it for the accommodation of the coronary cushion has rendered it
weakest. Not only is it weakest, but being more resilient than the portions
below it, it suffers more from the alternate movements of expansion and
contraction of the foot than does the horn below.

Although in many cases a cure of the existing crack may be easily
accomplished, regard should be paid to the possibility of its recurrence,
either in the same position or elsewhere. Really, in offering an opinion
as to the future usefulness of an animal so affected, a greater attention
should be directed to the animal's conformation than to the crack itself.
Where the vice of conformation giving rise to it (as, for example,
contracted heels or upright hoof) gives hope of being remedied, then
naturally it may be safely said that the liability to sand-crack goes wi