47 



suited about a sickly child, said it was possessed by 

 a devil, and he recommended its parents to throw it 

 into the river and drown it. Physicians in a succeeding 

 age, for a like case, exhibited rhubarb and magnesia, 

 and calomel. At last, in the present time, they have 

 come to open air and good diet. But the veterinary 

 profession are still where Luther was, for when a cow 

 is ill they say she is possessed by a fearful influence, 

 and that she must be slaughtered forthwith, lest 

 other cattle should become similarly possessed. 



Another folly is that of burying and wasting the 

 hides. The evidence at the Hamburg Congress was 

 that the hide of the most diseased animal completely 

 loses all power of infection after being hung up in 

 the air for twenty-four hours. 



Mr. Gamgee is a very clever man. His know- 

 ledge of facts connected with his profession is un- 

 doubtedly great. He has evidently got what Sydney 

 Smith calls that tremendous engine of colloquial 

 oppression, " a g'ood memory." 0. W. Holmes, the 

 American, truly says, e< The man to be depended 

 upon is not the man of facts, but the man who can 

 think correctly about facts/' 



The Chinese know facts. They knew the mere 

 facts about gunpowder many thousand years before 

 the Europeans did. But they knew nothing more, 

 till we showed them its enormous value by shooting 

 them with it. Thus Mr. Gamgee possesses great 

 power of seeing mere isolated facts and differences, 

 but none of seeing resemblances, and of discovering 



