Accept my prayers for success in all your undertakings, and the assurance of my affectionate esteem and respect. TO DOCTOR RUSH. MONTICELLO, March 6, 1813. DEAR SIR,--I received some time ago a letter signed "James Carver," proposing that myself, and my friends in this quarter, should subscribe and forward a sum of money towards the expenses of his voyage to London, and maintenance there while going through a course of education in their Veterinary school, with a view to his returning to America, and practising the art in Philadelphia. The name, person and character of the writer, were equally unknown to me, and unauthenticated, but as self-declared in the letter. I supposed him an Englishman, from the style in which he spoke of "His Majesty," and because an American, without offence to the laws, could not now be going, nor be sent by private individuals to England. The scheme did not appear to me either the shortest or surest way of going to work to accomplish the object. Because, if the Veterinary institution there be of the celebrity he described, it must already have produced subjects prepared for entering into practice, and disposed to come to a good position, claiming nothing till they should enter into function, or not more than their passage. I did not receive the letter until the day had elapsed on which the vessel was to depart wherein he had taken his passage; and his desire that the answer should go through you, is my only authority for troubling you with this, addressed to you, whom I know, love, and revere, and not to him, who, for any evidence I have but from himself, may be a zealous son of science, or an adventurer wanting money to carry him to London. I know nothing of the Veterinary institution of London, yet have no doubt it merits the high character he ascribes to it. It is a nation which possesses many learned men. I know well the Veterinary school of Paris, of long standing, and saw many of its publications during my residence there. They were classically written, announced a want of nothing but certainty as to their facts, which granted, the hypotheses were learned and plausible. The coach-horses of the rich of Paris were availed of the institution; but the farmers even of the neighborhood could not afford to call a Veterinary Doctor to their plough-horses in the country, or to send them to a livery stable to be attended in the city. On the whole, I was not a convert to the utility of the Institution. You know I am so to that of medicine, even in human complaints, but in a limited degree. That there are certain diseases of the human body, so distinctly pronounced by well-articulated symptoms, and recurring so often, as not to be mistaken, wherein experience has proved that certain substances applied, will restore order, I cannot doubt. Such are Kinkina in Intermittents, Mercury in Syphilis, Castor Oil in Dysentery, &c. And so far I go with the physicians. But there