240 
oy THE EXPA^'SION OF HOUSES’ FEET. 
appear, from the atnazing difficulty that Mr. Morgan finds in 
understanding it, even when pointed out to him, that the disclo¬ 
sure of it must have been a laborious effort, on the part of Mr. 
Clark, to overcome his original prejudices and preconceived no¬ 
tions, though it is only the discovery of a natural principle in the 
foot, which had been overlooked before. Your correspondent has 
advanced no new arguments, but seems inclined to abide by his 
experiments with the calipers, which I shewed to be inconclusive 
as to the final question, and to set at nought all the facts which 
anatomy, analogy, and even common observation, furnish to prove 
the expansion of the foot. His last letter is chiefly composed of 
ungracious terms applied to me, for having, very naturally, 
defended my own cause when attacked in The Lancet, and, of 
course, with that warmth which it is every man^s duty to feel on 
such an occasion. But Mr. Morgan has overshot the mark, and 
proclaimed his own weakness, in charging me with being “ acri¬ 
monious, virulent, or splenetic,^^ and that I slur, vilify, or vitu¬ 
perate his means or motives. These epithets belong not to my 
communication, and are too much like the common-place wea¬ 
pons of a hired advocate in a bad cause, who, in the absence of 
argument, clamours loudly about the intemperance of his adver¬ 
sary, in order to draw off public attention from the facts he has 
stated. There is no ground in my letter for these malevolent 
imputations. He pretends to account for this asserted ** acrimo¬ 
nious violence,” by the contempt which he unluckily evinced for 
theorists and book-makers, &c. Now, in what manner this con¬ 
tempt was to affect me, who never committed the sin of writing 
a book, I am quite at a loss to imagine ; and, as a theorist, though 
I will not deny acting on principle, and can render sufficient rea¬ 
son for what I do, still I am a practical shoeing-smith, and can 
execute my own orders if necessary, and therefore, so far as mak¬ 
ing and nailing on a horse’s shoe go, am perhaps less of a theorist 
than Mr. Morgan. 
One more word. Sir, and I have done. He says that my name 
is not to be found in the list of College Veterinary Surgeons. 
It is true, that I have not got a piece of paper from Mr. Coleman 
and his medical friends (whom he has so repeatedly asserted can 
never make good practitioners), because, in the present degraded 
state of the College, this ticket is considered, among men of 
judgment, as a disgrace. Were I disposed to fool away twenty 
guineas, 1 know where the paltry affair is to be got at any time, 
but never will seek it while the present mode of instruction 
exists, or submit to be catechised by men of another profession. 
For a time the word college commanded respect, but the failure of 
all Mr. Coleman’s patents, and the singuhr fact, that the pecu- 
