624 
ADVICE TO THE STUDENT. 
from the College ; and also demonstrations of veterinary osteology, 
highly valuable to the new-comer, and laying the foundation for 
his future and rapid improvement. 
To the first of these gentlemen we have often listened with 
pleasure and profit in another place ; and we congratulate the 
veterinary student in having one so competent and so anxious to 
impart that pharmaceutical knowledge heretofore withheld, or to 
be obtained only at the sacrifice of other pursuits, and without 
which the practitioner would often compromise his own reputa- 
tion and the well-doing of his patient. 
We took the liberty of dropping in at the first demonstration 
of Mr. Spooner; and we were truly pleased with its seeming sim- 
plicity, its perfect clearness, and yet the tact with which it was 
made to extend to every point essentially connected with future 
practice. 
An old teacher, but now retired from the lecture-room, may be 
permitted to warn the student of the paramount importance of 
that period of time on which he is about to enter. Mr. Spooner, 
in his introductory demonstration, the other day, earnestly 
recommended his junior pupils to make themselves perfectly 
masters of the osteology of their patients, before they seriously 
and deeply turned their thoughts to any thing else : and so 
would I, somewhat in the language that I was formerly ac- 
customed to use, impress upon them the importance of the close 
and anxious study of anatomy. The lectures of their professors, 
and of other teachers in the College or its immediate neighbour- 
hood, will obtain a due portion of their attention ; but this will, for 
a time, be considered only as a relief and relaxation from severer 
study : and the student will do himself wrong, who often runs far 
from home to listen to that which he cannot perfectly understand, 
and which he will rarely be able to apply to his own profession. 
If he would qualify himself for future scientific and successful 
practice, if he would uphold and add to the reputation of the 
profession which he has adopted, let me tell him that there is 
but one path — an early, a close , an unremitting study of anatomy. 
It is on this foundation, and on this alone, that his veterinary 
acquirements and his future respectability must be reared. How 
