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Home Extracts. 
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF VETERINARY MEDICINE 
IN ITS RELATION TO AGRICULTURE. 
THERE is a short sentence in the English tongue of talismanic 
character in the minds of many of the present day, — “Practical 
experience.” What is it] The words are simple, but widely 
significant ; extensive in their application, but too commonly 
confined to those who least of all deserve them. With the 
public they are the “ sine qua non,'' the acme of attainable 
greatness. Truly, as our facetious contemporary, Punch, re- 
marks, “ truly we are a practical people. Our naval architects 
launch a frigate ; she floats too much by the head, so we cut 
down her stern. Then she floats too much by the stern, so we 
take off her figure-head. Then she is found to be over- 
masted, and we put in lighter masts. Then it is found she can’t 
carry canvass enough, and we take them out again. Then she 
rolls too much, and we increase her ballast. Then her lower 
deck ports are under water, and we plug them up. Without 
her lower tier she does not carry metal enough, so we clap two 
sixty-fours at her bow and two sixty-fours at her stern. Then 
she will not make any way at all, and we are forced to begin 
all over again; and the account concludes with an awful bill to 
pay-” 
We should be sorry to underrate the importance of ** prac- 
tical experience,” even to admit a question of its imperative 
necessity ; but does it never occur to its most enthusiastic sup- 
porters, that a man may spend his threescore years and ten, 
practising all the time in the wrong direction ] Science is an 
accumulation of facts and principles deduced from them, the 
products of numberless experiences. Is it not, then, obvious that 
the man who commences to practise without making himself 
first familiar with the practice of those who have gone before 
him, is attempting, single-handed, what thousands combined 
have hardly accomplished] Of what value are a few isolated 
facts, unless they illustrate or indicate a principle] Every fact is 
but an example of some operating law : to be contented with the 
fact alone, to trust solely to “ practical experience,” is the 
characteristic of the empiric, the quack — not of the man of 
stmse. 
Was it by trusting to “ practical experience” that Galileo 
discovered the motions of the planetary system] Ages of prac- 
