636 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
here. Every day’s experience convinces us more fully that 
disease and death are often to be referred directly to the food 
partaken of by animals. How could we expect otherwise, 
seeing that we have chiefly to do with herbivorous ani- 
mals, and that very many plants indigenous to the soil 
are springing up with their ordinary food, which possess not 
merely injurious, but positively poisonous, properties? Instinct 
doubtless leads, as a rule, to an avoidance of these, or their 
baneful effects would be increased in a ten-fold degree. The 
annals of veterinary medicine are replete with instances of this 
kind, and the pagesof the Veterinaria?i in particular, have of late 
contained many similar cases. It may be, perhaps, that Nature, 
ever wise in all her operations, teaches us, by the free disper- 
sion of such plants, that we possess a ready means to the 
removal of disease, in some of its varied forms, in different 
animals ; it being an oft repeated axiom that what is food to 
one creature, is poison to another. Be this as it may, we see 
enough in the circumstance to prove that botany is so 
intimately connected with pathology, and has such a direct 
bearing on the progress of veterinary medicine, that ere long 
it must form a part of the student’s education. There is yet 
another and important view to be taken of this science in its 
connection both with vegetable physiology and chemistry as 
applied to agriculture, which is the probability that the present 
system of raisinglarge crops from the soil by the use of artificial 
manures is productive of disease to animals feeding thereon. 
Plants may be brought into a state of plethora which will as com- 
pletely unfit them, when in that condition, for food, as animals 
similarly placed are unfitted to undergo exertion, without the 
occurrence of disease. Besides this, plethoric animals, as is well 
known, are more susceptible to the influences of all the ordi- 
nary causes of disease, and experience is proving that plants 
quickly forced to maturity are similarly circumstanced. It 
is vain to suppose that the health of animals can be long 
maintained when they are fed on diseased vegetables. We 
would not, however, by these remarks be understood as object- 
ing in the abstract to the employment of artificial manures, but 
rather to offer a caution against the too free and frequent use of 
them to such plants as are given in their crude state as food to 
sheep and cattle. We know full well the pressure which is 
put upon the farming community, and that an agriculturist is 
to be regarded as a manufacturer of the raw materials, whence 
we derive our bread, our meat, and in a great measure our 
drink, and our clothing. Such being the case, his proceedings, 
to be attended with success, now that he has to compete with 
a cheap labour market, and the serfdom of the world, must be 
