VOL. XXVIII, 
No. 325. 
JANUARY, 1855. 
Fourth Series, 
No. 1. 
To the Editor of c The Veterinarian? 
“ Gone is another year ; 
And on the brow severe 
Of chill December the funereal yew, 
Holly, and laurustine, 
And ivy, whose sad vine 
Loves the lorn ruin, wreathe a green adieu 
To the sweet hours of Autumn, and the play 
Of jocuud feeling passed, like leaves, to swift decay.” 
Sir, — The close of the year 1854, and the completion of 
another volume of your Journal, present a suitable occasion 
for offering a few remarks to your readers, and taking a slight 
glance at our veterinary literature, of which I believe you are 
the only periodical caterer for the wants of the profession, 
many as they are. To you, therefore, we are solely indebted 
for a medium of communication which, if rightly used, might 
become of inestimable value, by affording means for the free 
discussion of opinions and modes of practice, and of record- 
ing the various discoveries and improvements v T hich, from 
time to time, result from the employment of so much talent 
as is now to be found engaged in the noble art of preventing 
disease in, and administering relief to, the various domestic 
animals intrusted to the care of man. That this great 
desideratum has not been more freely taken advantage of is 
a matter of surprise and regret to all who are capable of 
forming a just opinion of the incalculable good that would 
have follow ed the employment of a means so well adapted to 
improve the practice of our art ; w hile, at the same time, it 
could not have failed, in some degree, to raise the qualified 
practitioner above the ignorance and consequent incapacity 
by w hich he was so often surrounded, and with which his 
claim to merit w 7 as frequently confounded. But while we 
lament w 7 ith unfeigned sorrow 7 the slow progress that has been 
made, w T e yet rejoice that w T e can, by comparing the past w 7 ith 
XXVIII. 1 
