THE INTRODUCTORY LECTURE OF MR. FIELD. 6(57 
Hunter belong more exclusively to the office of the veterinary 
surgeon ; but I would have such persons to recollect, that, at the 
time they were undertaken, there was scarcely a single member of 
our body who could have afforded him any assistance — to so low 
an ebb had our profession at that time fallen. I would moreover 
add, that in the prosecution of scientific inquiries there is no such 
thing as exclusiveness. The book of nature is open to all ; so that 
those who run may read. In the field of science there are no en- 
closures or preserves for the benefit of the favoured few. No 
line of demarcation obstructs the progress of the inquirer after 
truth, as if to say, “ thus far shalt thou go and no farther all, 
without distinction, are admitted, and are entitled to range with 
unmolested freedom and impunity ; and may at all times indulge 
their curiosity, and satisfy their thirst after knowledge, in any part 
of her vast and illimitable domains. 
“ The proper study for mankind is man*.” 
So said the poet and moral philosopher ; and he followed up his 
thesis by a most beautiful reference to the instincts of inferior ani- 
mals. He pursued his argument with exquisite skill, and he proved 
irrefragably the advantages man sustained in the knowledge of the 
habits and peculiar faculties of these lower and more humble deni- 
zens of our globe. 
Thus, then, to man the voice of Nature spake,— 
“ Go, from the creatures thy instructions take : 
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield ; 
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field ; 
Thy art of building from the bee receive ; 
Learn from the mole to plough, the worm to weave ; 
Learn from the little nautilus to sail, 
Spread the thin oar and catch the driving gale*.” 
The professor of human physiology pursues a similar method of 
ratiocination ; but he uses a more direct, at least a more practical 
and tangible, mode of inquiry. He has recourse to the same in- 
struments, — he makes himself acquainted with their various struc- 
tures, their respective functions, and the laws of nature, as they are 
found in these lower orders of creation ; and then, by analogical 
inference, and by an ingenious process of inductive reasoning, he 
makes apparent the laws that govern and regulate the functions of 
life as they exist in man. 
I now, gentlemen, approach a portion of my address in which I 
would wish, with every feeling of diffidence, to intimate to the 
learned Professors at the Veterinary College a defect which I be- 
Pope’s Essay on Man. 
