8 NEW LIGHTS AND IMPROVEMENTS [BOOK L 



belief in the student of these pages, and supersede 

 the propriety of any further explanation ; but that 

 they are demonstrable is not too much to say, 

 seeing the reception our former investigations and 

 enquiries on this head have experienced ; though 

 we still hesitate on arrogantly insisting hereon to 

 its fullest extent — as it is apprehended must take 

 place at no distant period — until more mature re- 

 flection, and some further experiments, have con- 

 firmed the opinions thrown out in the former edi- 

 tion and here farther illustrated. Mean time, the 

 verbal warm approval of many distinguished judges 

 of horses, and the written testimony of others, to 

 be noticed as we proceed, as they confirm our first 

 immature views of the subject, determine the mode 

 of treating it which we shall now pursue. 



5. Discussions of this nature, however, that appear 

 first in a periodical miscellany, are necessarily too 

 argumentative, and presuppose too many obstacles 

 that require previous solving, to be particularly use- 

 ful to the junior student, or the wholly uninitiated; 

 whilst, from adopting a very popular and diffuse 

 manner of treating the subject, we were constrained 

 to turn away altogether from the use of scientific 

 terms which those persons are taught to venerate ; 

 and we were further induced to decry those terms as 

 burthensome to the sense, as indeed they are to the 

 common sense reader. In this state those papers 

 went to press, under the title of " The Veterinary 

 Surgeon." We do not say they went hastily, nor 

 that they were at any time crude or ill-digested ; on 



