506 
JEROME BUCK. 
benefit of the horse, the trusting and toiling friend of man, is a 
portion of your future duty. 
Gentlemen of the graduating class: Your most constant and 
uninterrupted application is demanded, as well as habits of ex¬ 
tended observation. You have been trained for life and influence 
and action. Leave not a field of nature unopened. Quicken 
every faculty of observation. Not a tree “from the cedar that 
is on Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the 
wall,” that shall not be noted. Know the names of the gems that 
sparkle in the sun, as well as those of the shells that blush in the 
sea. By extending the fields of knowledge, you can secure the 
hearty sympathy and active cooperation of those who walk in the 
other paths of medical science. The Jenners and Hunters, the 
Coopers and the Abernethys “ will welcome you to a closer and 
a warmer fraternity. You have had in your professors men of 
high and deserved distinction, who have not thought that the 
pride and affluence of their ripened faculties and wide experience 
could blush and be diminished in their efforts to ameliorate the 
condition of the lower races of animals. They have been en¬ 
couraged to do this by the highest and best and wisest and most 
humane of their noble profession, and they extend every encour¬ 
agement to you to surmount and overcome every mean and low 
suspicion of inequality, by a hearty and earnest endeavor to reach 
the glowing heights of the utmost professional possibility. Your 
Alma Mater deserves well at the hands of a sympathetic and 
enlightened public. She first saw the necessity and felt the 
humanity to extend to the dumb creation the soothing benefit of 
scientific skill, and show the world that genius and learning were 
never better employed than ministering to the pitiful distresses 
of the uncomplaining animals. All honor to her as the pioneer 
in this noble and Christian work. I repeat, so act that you will 
command and enforce the respect of the most learned in other 
departments of medical science. And, why not? The parts of 
knowledge have a kindred relation with each other. The mind 
is as expansive as it is immortal. It grows by what it feeds on, 
and its true stores cf real knowledge are no more felt to be a 
burthen than the resistance of the ever-present and ever-pressing 
