Impcdiuicnts to Veicrinary Science in Great Britain 



413 



the enormous losses yearly incurred by dis- 

 ease, indigenous as well as imported, it is 

 obvious greater efficiency is required from 

 somewhere to batde with them, and render 

 the process of stock breeding and rearing 

 more ' profitable. That efficiency with all 

 the required machinery may be found in 

 the army of veterinarians that are turned out 

 from our schools each year, all that is wanted 

 is proper organization. It is simply absurd 

 to suppose that these men will live on science, 

 however much they may love it, and equally 

 so to imagine that they can fill, with honesty, 

 two positions having entirely opposite cha- 

 acters, expecting good to result. Yet in our 

 " penny wise and pound foolish " policy 

 under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) 

 Act, 1869, a veterinary surgeon is set down 

 to serve government, which monopolizes all 

 his best tim.e, and sell his clients, who find 

 him the most work. If the State requires 



men to act as inspectors and carry out the 

 provisions of the Act, it should employ and 

 pay them entirely. 



The great want of veterinarians is felt in 

 the country districts where the stock is raised 

 and fed. The duties of veterinarians should 

 be confined to special districts, and exerted 

 mainly in the prevention of disease. The 

 annual losses now incurred would more than 

 pay for this arrangement, as well as proper 

 and separate systems of government inspec- 

 tion, and thorough national insurance and 

 indemnification. All these are indispensable 

 for the preservation of our stock, and the les- 

 sening of our dependence upon foreign coun- 

 tries. The more we can accomplish this, the 

 greater will be the powers of Veterinary 

 Science to battle with disease, and the more 

 extended its progress as one of the branches 

 of learning so instrumental to success in our 

 social economy. 



LANDLORD, TENANT, AND LABOURER. 



MR BENYON, one of the M.P.s for 

 Berks, and President of the Pang- 

 bourne Ploughing Association, at the recent 

 annual ploughing match, in proposing success 

 to the Society, remarked that they were 

 drinking (we quote from the Reading Mer- 

 cury) success to the farmer, success to the 

 labourer, and success to agriculture generally. 

 Instituted and supported as that and hun- 

 dreds of other similar associations were by 

 the farmers of the neighbourhood for the 

 benefit of their poorer neighbours, anything 

 which militated against the wellfare of the 

 agricultural classes must seriously affect a 

 society like that. This brought him to con- 

 sider the nature of the relations that existed 

 between the different classes of the com- 

 munity, rendered more important at the pre- 

 sent time in consequence of those proceed- 

 ings which had rudely interfered with the 

 good feeling between master and servant — 

 proceedings which he was firmly persuaded 



arose not from any want of good feeling on 

 the part of the labourers towards their em- 

 ployers, but from the gross misrepresentation 

 of paid agitators who stumped it through the 

 country for the purpose of setting class against 

 class, and of stirring up enmity where nothing 

 but goodwill had previously existed. No 

 doubt there were black sheep amongst 

 farmers, as amongst other classes of society. 

 There was the hard taskmaster, and the vio- 

 lent-tempered man ; the man who tried to 

 get as much for his money as possible ; and 

 heie and there they might perhaps put their 

 finger on an absentee landlord, who took no 

 interest in the welfare of those who occu- 

 pied their land, and who thought it too much 

 trouble to attend institutions of that tiature. 

 But surely it was very hard to condemn the 

 whole class for the delinquencies of the few, 

 and to take violent action against those who 

 were above them, simply because they were 

 above them, and not because they had to 



