INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 597 
be your satisfaction when this is attained ; only remember 
the strength to achieve this is not all your own . 
Come we now to your studies. These embrace the 
anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the horse, ox, sheep, 
pig, and dog, or of the domesticated animals generally ; with 
chemistry, as applied to veterinary medicine, and materia 
medica. The principles and the practice of shoeing will 
likewise call for some attention on your part ; nor must you 
be ignorant of veterinary jurisprudence. 
Your aids to these studies will be: 1st, the lectures de- 
livered within this theatre by the respective expositors of 
those divisions of science. And here permit a word of ex- 
postulation to be offered in all kindness. I cannot too 
strongly condemn the practice, which has somewhat increased 
of late years, of indulging in boisterous mirth before the 
beginning of the lectures, and which sometimes scarcely 
subsides when the lecturer commences his instructions. 
Occasionally it is productive of sibilant sounds that become 
continuous during his allotted hour, distracting the attention 
of those pupils who are desirous of acquiring information^ 
and compelling the lecturer to speak in the way of correction 
and advice. 
Depend upon it, such a course of procedure unfits the 
mind rightly to receive proper impressions, or should they be 
made, they are but evanescent. The beautiful concentric 
circles — no unfit resemblance, perhaps, of the diffusion of 
knowledge — caused by the falling stone, are seen only in the 
deep and placid lake : the turbulent and shallow stream 
yields them not ; as the sweetest strains of music are lost in 
the stormy blast and tempest. 
Nor let it be thought by you, that an attendance merely 
on the lectures — regular and continuous though this be — is 
all that is required of you. This, possibly, is the least part 
of your duty. You must endeavour, by afterwards reflecting 
on what you have heard, to become intimately familiar with 
the truths enunciated, and to write them on your memories 
as with a pen of adamant. The utmost the lecturer can do, 
is to give you little more than an outline of his subject, 
graphic and correct it may and should be, and he has doubt- 
lessly laboured hard to make it so, hut you must fill this up by 
subsequent study . 
As the 2nd aid may be placed the information you will re- 
ceive during the visits paid by the appointed professors to 
the animals in the infirmary, constituting “ hospital practice.” 
. This I consider a most valuable part of your instructions, and 
from its being conveyed in a colloquial form, it is more likely 
