FORM FOR A REGIMENTAL RETURN OF SICK HORSES. 31 
in India, until, when at Bombay, in June last, preparatory to 
embarkation, I met with a few of your early Numbers, which 
had just arrived from Europe for a friend. These earlier Num¬ 
bers I read with real satisfaction; for in that juvenile stage of 
its existence, The Veterinarian was at once well calculated 
to interest, instruct, and stimulate all connected with the profes¬ 
sion; and, from its thus fair infant promise, I augured that, on 
my arrival in England, when I should be able to see all it had 
achieved, I should neither find the work retrograde nor extin¬ 
guished. And delighted I am to see it so very much the reverse 
of either. I am sanguine it is daily progressing to even a wider 
and more extended sphere of interest and usefulness; though, 
necessarily, its advances must be less apparently rapid; since in 
all moral efforts or improvements, we find that, having cleared 
the first rugged paths, our remaining labours seem attended 
with less comparative success, in degree. And, why ? Because 
so much finer and more subtle, and therefore less evident to an 
unexamining eye. But, while I trust I am understood, I can 
see I am here over metaphysical, in a sense, in my illustration : 
but let it pass. 
I think it is the duty of, and should be a pleasure to, every 
one desirous of seeing the profession acquire that vantage 
ground it so eminently deserves, to give the Editors of a work— 
or rather, I should say, the work itself, at once so meritorious 
and useful—every support. Such a Periodical may at once be 
termed a desideratum in the annals of the veterinary art; and 
it may be view ed as an influential assistant and stepping-stone 
towards gaining that vantage ground, the profession, it is an 
organ of and devoted to, is struggling'justly for. I can have no 
interest but the general one: 1 have, and I am sensible very 
hastily, taken up my pen to give my humble voice of applause to 
The Veterinarian, with the least possible delay; and in sup¬ 
port of the sentiments I have expressed, I beg to add, I am 
desirous to come forward as one of your contributors. 
What I can offer towards the common stock, I am eager to do. 
I transmit you my-name and address, and will be cheerfully 
f uoudto step forward your avowed contributor, whenever I shall 
eel self-satisfied enough to encourage me to aspire to the 
honour, by the belief that what I have (ere then) written has 
been approved of as practically useful. 
I went to India in 1827, as veterinary surgeon in the Madras 
cavalry ; and have only returned, on a short leave, on urgent 
private affairs. My return to India, how ever, is a contigeney; 
as my health suffers severely in a tropical climate. I have, in a 
rough way, collected a good many facts connected with the 
