We strongly recommend the student to do this with the actual bones
at hand-- they may be cleared very easily in a well-boiled rabbit. This
recommendation may appear superfluous to some readers, but, as a
matter of fact, the marked proclivity of the average schoolmaster for
mere book-work has put such a stamp on study, that, in nine cases
out of ten, a student, unless he is expressly instructed to the
contrary, will go to the tortuous, and possibly inexact, descriptions
of a book for a knowledge of things that lie at his very finger-tips. We
have not written, this chapter to give a complete knowledge of the
skeleton, but simply as an aid in the actual examination of the bones.