538 
REVIEW. 
breakers and riding-masters. The day must and will arrive 
when every one of these distingues will find his labours circum¬ 
scribed within his own proper sphere—when (to repeat the old 
proverb) every shoemaker will be confined to his own last. 
If there were any one species of literary composition that 
could have the effect (now that the veterinary, as well as other 
schoolmasters, is abroad) of doing our profession harm in any 
way, it would be such an one as is here presented to our readers ; 
a work coming from the pen of a man who has written not only 
more learnedly but much more takingly—more like a scholar, 
and at the same time more like a sportsman, and with more 
pleasing fireside anecdote, than any one who has gone before 
him. And for this reason is the production of such a writer 
calculated to take this effect—because sportsmen, grooms, and 
others into whose hands his book may fall, finding that the 
author really is, and in an eminent degree, acquainted with their 
occupations, will also give him implicit credit for knowing ours. 
No person that admires the warrior and statesmen-like brilliances 
shining forth in the character of Napoleon, but deplores that he 
ever suffered his ambition to get the master of his judgment, 
and embark him in such an undertaking as a Russian war: on 
the same ground it is, admiring as we do the sporting character 
of our friend Nimrod, that we have cause to lament that he ever 
allowed himself to be led away into the province of veterinary 
science—a country to him unexplored, undefined, undescribed. 
We lament it, for his sake : for our own we might (were we of a 
malevolent disposition) feel inclined to rejoice at it; inasmuch as 
his medical reasoning, clothed even as it is in eloquent language, 
and embroidered with amusing anecdote, still is of too superfi¬ 
cial and flimsy a character to stay for a moment the serious 
attention of one medical professor. To a degree, Nimrod would 
seem to have imbibed a notion, far too prevalent now-a-days, 
that, because a horse is a horse, and not a man—is a beast or brute, 
and not a human being—ergo, that not only has any one a sort 
of right to administer to him when sick or lame, but that it 
follows that his disorders (being those of a mere animal) must 
come within the capacity of any man of common sense who 
chooses to apply himself to a little external observation. But, if 
such knowledge is to be obtained in this prompt and facile man¬ 
ner, of what use is it for us to spend our days in anatomical pur¬ 
suits—our nights in physiological study ? We might as well 
commence our learning upon a horse’s back, riding after a pack 
of fox-hounds. It would be rather a more pleasurable pursuit, 
we hold little doubt, to many veterinary pupils. But the truth 
of the matter is, that just so much science as is necessary to con¬ 
stitute a human surgeon or physician, the same is required to 
properly qualify a man to enter upon the practice of animal me¬ 
dicine ; and though but few are fortunate enough to obtain this, 
