304 ON PRELIMINARY AND PRACTICAL EXAMINATIONS. 
of Veterinary Surgeons and its committees, viz., the pre- 
liminary examination of the youth, and the practical exami- 
nation of the student. I consider there are no questions that 
contain within them the germs of such great and lasting 
benefits to the profession and the public, if only they are pro- 
perly arranged and faithfully carried out. Nothing has equalled 
them in grandeur and intrinsic usefulness since the charter 
was granted. For how, let me ask, can an Act of Parliament 
metamorphose the profession, however stringent its clauses 
may be drawn up, in order to put down non-qualified men and 
quackery, so long as a class of men are admitted into the 
profession who are continually bringing down disgrace on 
themselves and on the profession to which they belong, in 
consequence of being themselves grossly illiterate men, whose 
intellects have never been cultured, whose minds are so obtuse 
and stunted that their mental powers are incapable of com- 
prehending the simplest facts in science, and after they have 
listened to lectures over and over again their teachers find that 
their intellectual faculties are like the barren sterility of the 
bare rock, that cannot receive the roots of any plants. 
Would it not be much better to reject such men at first rather 
than after they have spent their money and two or three years 
of time at college ? It would then become known throughout 
the land that education is a necessity in the case, all parents 
would become aware of it, and all youths would come pre- 
pared by having acquired a good sound English education. I 
verily believe there is not a thinking man either in or out of the 
profession but would say that the preliminary examination of 
the youth, as it is so laudably adopted at the Royal Veterinary 
College, is an indispensable necessity. It must be arranged 
and faithfully carried out at each of the three veterinary 
colleges forthwith; nay, this must inevitably be so, because 
the Governors and the Professors of the Royal Veterinary 
College, the Trustees and Professors of the Edinburgh 
Veterinary College, the Principal of the Glasgow Veterinary 
College, and the Council of the Royal College of Veterinary 
Surgeons, are all fully alive to its necessity and importance, 
and are most anxious to carry it out. 
There is another class of men who possess a satisfactory 
education, but who are grossly deficient as to their practical 
knowledge ; they, too, are constantly bringing down disgrace 
on themselves and upon the profession to which they belong. 
As regards the equally important question, viz., the practical 
examination of the student, I verily believe there is not a 
man living who has any pretensions to common honesty and 
common sense but will say, before any student is granted a 
