216 Mil. SPOONERS WORK ON THE FOOT OF THE HORSE. 
joins, you allude to the fact, and with some regret, that he published 
very little during his life. This, however, is very frequently the 
case with men who are in the habit of delivering almost daily 
oral lectures. Abernetliy, whose lectures I attended, used to 
keep all his good things for his pupils; and his jokes and illustra¬ 
tions seemed to be carefully tabulated with each portion of the 
human frame. We can imagine how their raciness and freshness 
would have been lost by previously passing through the printer’s 
hands. We can hardly wonder, therefore, that lecturers so often 
shun the press. 
In a weekly paper, called the Sporting Times , which was put 
into my hands whilst travelling in a railway carriage some 
time since, there is a short notice written by a pen evidently 
dipped in gall, which stated that the late Professor in his 
younger days wrote a work, or an essay, as the writer calls it, on 
the ‘Foot of the TIorse and he then proceeds to disparage the 
work, stating that it consisted of old things hashed up, &c. Now, 
it is very evident that the writer had never read the essay which 
he so freely criticised, or he would have seen that it was a book 
of nearly 400 pages, published in 1840, when the Professor 
would have been thirty-four years of age, and that its author was 
not Charles Spooner, but the w T riter of this letter. However 
grievous it may be to incur the censure of the critic in question, I 
must console myself with the knowledge, which the enclosure will 
prove, that this was not the opinion of such authorities as the 
Editors of the Lancet , The British and Foreign Medical Review, 
The Sportsman , The New Sporting Magazine , as well as the 
Veterinarian; and as in those days it was the custom to read 
works before reviewing them, I must really give their critiques 
the preference. 
It is rather a singular fact that my namesake and myself were 
the only persons bearing the name of Spooner on the List of Vete¬ 
rinary Surgeons, and that we were both pupils together, I being, 
although several years younger, yet his senior at the College; 
indeed, I perfectly remember his first entrance into the College 
gates, and my being informed of the accession of a namesake. 
Although, like the writer of his obituary, we were friends of very 
long standing, we have, from our names and pursuits during our 
respective careers, been often mistaken for each other. I have 
been often called Professor, and he has been as frequently 
spoken of as a writer. 'Well, no great harm has been done, but 
still it is as well, just for the information of those who may not 
be aware of them, to state the simple facts. Although for 
many years past my time and energies, and, I may add, my pen 
also, have been devoted to other pursuits, yet in the early days of 
the Veterinarian , ere it had been thoroughly established, I had 
something to do with it, having been occasionally called to the 
rescue by its quondam Editors. There are a few anecdotes of these 
early days, interesting, perhaps, to the profession alone, that I 
