702 
ANNIVERSARY DINNER OF THE 
The President now proposed the Health of the Treasurer of the Insti- 
tution, Mr. Spooner. He had well and worthily preserved the monies 
with which he had been entrusted, and rendered a due and faithful account 
of them. By his frequent attendance at the meetings of the Society he had 
materially contributed to their pleasure and value; and in his own theatre, 
where his worth was duly estimated, he was labouring to prepare the students 
for the discharge of the duties of their profession. 
Mr. Spooner returned thanks : — Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, for the 
high honour you have conferred upon me in drinking my health, I feel no 
difficulty or diffidence in returning yon my most sincere and heartfelt thanks; 
but to do so in language sufficiently impressive to convey to you the real 
sentiments of my mind, is, indeed, a task to which I am unequal. When I 
reflect upon the source whence it has emanated, and the enthusiastic re- 
sponse of every member of this joyous meeting, my soul teems with grateful 
acknowledgments too acute for the expressive agency of my lips to give them 
due utterance. 
As Treasurer of the Veterinary Medical Association, and one of the mem- 
bers of the council, I might have expected my health, in common with my 
colleagues, to have been drunk in due form; but I suspect. Gentlemen, you 
will not accuse me of egotism when I say, that on this occasion I am con- 
vinced you have waved all form, and that your acclamations have been ac- 
companied with a correspondent sincerity of feeling which, though con- 
scious of undeserving, believe me, I duly appreciate. 
Gentlemen : this indeed, to me, is an evening of rejoicing; for, on look- 
ing around me, I find that this meeting consists, with one exception, of 
members of our own profession. It is, then, truly a Veterinary Anniversary 
Dinner, where mere empty forms and cold unmeaning ceremony can find 
no place to interrupt its harmony. We are united in one common cause. 
We are here met to commemorate the founding of a Veterinary Associ- 
ation, which has for its object the enhancement of the respectability and 
the general advancement of our art; and when I say that our funds are 
ample, our library extensive, and our members numerous, I think I can 
offer no better proof of the success which has attended the labours of the 
past session. 
Believe me, Gentlemen, I feel that the high encomium of our Chairman, 
and your kind approbation, have placed me in a position to which I had no 
right to aspire ; for, although as a humble teacher of veterinary anatomy 
and physiology I have ever had the advancement and welfare of our profes- 
sion uppermost in my heart, it must be borne in mind, that my endeavours 
have been more particularly confined to the carrying out of those principles 
which have been previously inculcated by eminent men who have gone be- 
fore me, many of whom I have now the honour of seeing, both on my right 
hand and on my left. The study of anatomy is a noble pursuit, but if con- 
fined to one subject merely, as is too frequently the case in the human 
schools, the field for physiological deduction is necessarily limited, and the 
sublimity of the science much curtailed. I am firmly of opinion that the 
man who confines his observations to the structural arrangements of one 
animal only, whatever may be the position of the link which such may form 
in the great chain of animate beings, is unworthy of the name of an anato- 
mist. I would, therefore, strongly recommend the veterinary pupil to avail 
himself of the opportunities which are afforded to him, by ardently apply- 
ing himself to the study of the anatomy of all domestic animals; and it will 
go hard with him if he does not occupy a position even higher than the one 
allotted to him by my friend, Mr. Youatt; and instead of, as he observes. 
