6 
VETERINARY PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS. 
could not be with reason or justice enforced, because sober 
and long-continued investigation/' numerous experiments/' 
much observation/' and "Mong experience" were so many- 
obstacles in the way of the infant’s learning to talk; and that 
whatever it might say when it did speak, was to be received 
as inconclusive because longer experience and more minute 
inquiry" might contradict it. But, the climax of this paragraph 
is, that, after the wily and learned writer had directed his pen 
with all imaginable subtlety to guard the Public from forming 
expectations and calculating upon the Professor’s ability and 
industry, he concludes by saying, that some advantages are ob¬ 
tainable even from erroneous opinions: so that, after all, he has 
not furnished his hero with any excuse for not continuing the 
Transactionsf be they orthodox or be they not. Now then 
for the finale of this in-and-out preface— 
The first number of this Work will be small in consequence of the Pro¬ 
fessor’s time being much occupied with a larger Work, on the internal Me¬ 
chanism of the Foot of the Horse. The cases he has selected, and the ob¬ 
servations he has made on the Nature and Treatment of these Cases, are 
chiefly confined to the Wounds of Joints and other Circumscribed Cavities. 
Such accidents are very frequent, and the common modes of treatment 
often fail. Neither are the best remedies for the same diseases in the 
human subject commonly successful in horses.” ‘ 
So ends the Preface ; finis coronat opus; at another time we 
will look over the Observations on Wounds of Circumscribed 
Cavities," and the cases given in illustration : the larger 
work" will form a cud for future rumination. At present, let 
us pause a moment to contemplate the* fearful chasm in the 
annals of veterinary medicine—the long and dark and dreary 
interval between the publication of the single number of tlie 
(6 Transactions^^ and' the First of the Veterinarian^^ —an interval 
of seven and twenty years—almost a professional lifetime ! It 
is true some luminaries have made their appearance in the pro- • 
fessional horizon in the course of this darkened period; but 
they have been too few and too far apart to aftbrd a steady and 
