PEEFAGE. 



When tlie number and vai'iety of works already published 

 by competent writers on YeterinarySurgery, Parriery, &c., 

 are considered, little can be expected from a new com- 

 pilation besides a careful selection of the most useful 

 matter, and some degTee of improvement in the mode of 

 adapting it to the understanding of the general reader, 

 in order to render it of practical utility. With these 

 objects in view, the Author has endeavoured to avoid 

 the use of technical exi^ressions, which only tend to 

 embarrass and confuse those who are ignorant of the 

 Teterinary art ; and he has oifered to the public no 

 information or remedy, which has not borne the test of 

 actual experiment, or whose efficacy has not been fully 

 established by a long course of practice, extending over 

 a period of twenty -five years, under the most dis- 

 tinguished Yeterinary Surgeons of the age. Nothing 

 has been left to conjecture or supposition ; no speculative 

 theories have been indulged in, but an amount of solid 

 information has been collected, and presented to the 

 public, in such a fonn as to combine, as far as possible, 

 two apparently opposite qualities — completeness and 

 conciseness. In treating of Yeterinary Science, so inti- 

 mately connected with anatomy and animal physiology, 



