ANALYSIS OF CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
293 
SCHOOL OF WAR. 
Adopting the system pursued by the great military powers 
on the Continent, Belgium, by a royal decree, dated 14th 
March, 1870, has instituted what is designated a School of 
W ar (Ecole de Guerre ) . 
At this important establishment there is to be a professor 
of hippology, and M. Van Exem, deputy veterinary surgeon 
to the king, has been appointed to that honorable post. 
For a long period, France has had veterinary professors — 
army veterinary surgeons, specially selected — at the cavalry 
schools, and lately one at the infantry school of St. Cyr. A 
knowledge of horses and their management is now recognised 
by enlightened governments as a most essential feature in the 
training of all officers for the active duties of their profession, 
and this recognition of the value of our science is not the 
least satisfactory result of the experience of modern events. 
BELGIAN ROYAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE. 
At the meeting held on the 25th February, Professor 
Defays, of the Brussels Veterinary School, was unanimously 
elected a titular member, and M. Petry, Government Vete- 
rinary Surgeon of Liege, an honorary member. 
DOGS’ FLESH AS FOOD. 
In the Art Medical , M. Defays refers to the public journals 
having asserted that dogs’ flesh does not deserve the evil 
things that have been reported of it, and that, when properly 
seasoned, it constitutes, according to all reports, an aliment 
that may be consumed without repugnance. This assertion, 
he says, is not absolutely true. The flesh of the dog can 
only possess these properties when the animal has been fed 
almost exclusively on a vegetable diet, or, in fact, when it has 
been submitted to a regime different to that for which it was 
organized, as the dog which lives upon meat exhales a strong 
odour, and this is communicated to its muscular tissue. There- 
fore it is that the people who eat dogs — such as the South 
Sea Islanders, the Tunguses, Chinese, Greenlanders, and the 
Esquimaux — take the precaution to submit to a particular 
diet, for a certain time, the dogs they intend to eat. Con- 
sequently, when the population of a besieged town is compelled 
to resort to the canine species to procure a nitrogenous ali- 
ment, it is not a matter of indifference that dogs should be 
sacrificed just as they present themselves, for those should 
first be chosen which live in houses and are fed in a particu- 
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