EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
487 
something would have been advanced in reply. All the ob- 
jections which we have seen urged, however, have taken the 
form of personal complaints, and not unfrequently the 
Government has been blamed for permitting what it really 
had no power to prevent. The appointment of inspectors 
in every district rests entirely, under the Act, with the local 
authority, and so long as the inspector does not conduct 
himself in a culpable manner, the Government cannot 
require his removal. If the clause referring to the appoint- 
ment of inspectors had specified Members of the Royal 
College of Veterinary Surgeons, the authorities would have 
had no choice in the matter ; but we, as a profession, have 
not been able to obtain this privilege, nor, indeed, other privi- 
leges, which we have learned to consider of much higher 
importance than the exclusive right to hold inspectorships, 
and we have failed, not on account of want of efforts, but 
in spite thereof. 
It is much to be regretted that misconception should 
prevail among veterinary surgeons respecting the powers 
which the Act confers upon the authorities who are charged 
with its execution, because complaints which are based on 
such misapprehensions are inevitably disregarded. 
Respecting the formation of the Veterinary Department 
much comment has been indulged *in by writers and 
speakers whose opinion would have been considerably 
modified had they known the exact circumstances of the 
case under discussion ; for example, a writer in last month’s 
Veterinarian gave utterance to an expression of regret that 
the most lucrative appointment belonging to the veterinary 
profession is held by a physician, and at the same time 
suggested that the office of a “ cattle inspector 39 should be 
considered as beneath the dignity of a medical man. It 
ought to be well known by this time that the Secretary of 
the Department, although he is a medical man, is not a 
cattle inspector, that his duties have no concern with those 
of an inspector, and that, in short, he has no medical func- 
tions whatever. 
A veterinary surgeon might possess the necessary ad- 
ministrative ability in an equal degree with a Doctor of 
