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ACCOUNT OF THE DINNER. 
require no excuse for proposing this toast, and, therefore, without 
trepassing further on their time, he would propose “ Their Council, 
and prosperity to them for their honourable conduct on all occasions.” 
This toast having been drunk with the utmost enthusiasm, 
Mr. Field regretted that the gentleman who should have pro- 
posed this toast was obliged to leave on account of indisposition, 
and that the task should have devolved upon him. As regarded 
the Council, he was quite sure that those gentlemen would do all 
in their power to promote the respectability and advancement of 
the College of Veterinary Surgeons. If he, from the situation in 
which he had been placed, had been enabled to render any service 
to the profession to which he belonged, he had done no more than 
his duty. As a member of the profession, he had felt himself bound 
to help in the accomplishment of the noble objects in which he had 
been engaged. 
He begged leave to propose a toast, “ The health of Mr. Spooner, 
of Southampton, and the country practitioners.” No one respected 
that class of the profession more than he did. He had received 
great information from them. The variety of cases that came 
under their notice was greater than the London practitioner met 
with. The country practitioners constituted no small or unim- 
portant stand in the profession at large : he felt that the meeting 
would join with him in wishing them prosperity. 
Mr. Spooner rose to return his acknowledgments of the manner 
in which his health had been drunk by the company. He had 
also to return thanks for a most important body ; and when the 
meeting reflected on the situation in which they were placed, and 
the manner, with some few exceptions that he wished were 
fewer, in which they supported their credit and respectability, 
he thought they would agree that the country practitioners de- 
served the mark of respect paid them by the company. It should 
be remembered, that the country practitioner had not, like the 
London one, the congregated talent of the metropolis to fall back 
upon in an emergency, but in most of the cases confided to their care 
they were obliged to depend on their own resources, and he could 
assure their friends that in many instances they were all required to 
carry them through. They would excuse him for saying, that it was 
the country practitioners who, as a body, were principally concerned 
