502 
ROYAL COLLEGE OF VETERINARY SURGEONS. 
Another subject which has equally occupied the attention 
of the Council has been the Examination Inquiry Com- 
mittees' Report. Acting upon the suggestions made by Mr. 
Ernes, the Committee, in bringing up their Report, expressed 
an opinion that it would not be to the interest of the pro- 
fession for the solution of this question to be indefinitely 
postponed. 
Indeed it is universally acknowledged that reforms in the 
system of testing the capabilities of young men for the practice 
of the veterinary art are urgent. Nevertheless your committee 
consider it impossible to give effect, at once, to all the pro- 
positions made by Air. Ernes, without meeting with obstacles 
which might endanger the early adoption of the most pressing 
modifications in the examinations for the College diploma. 
Under existing circumstances it might be absolutely pre- 
judicial to the best interests of the student, if compelled to 
resort to a greater extent than at present to that system of 
cramming , whereby even the most intelligent acquire a know- 
ledge of the subjects taught them in the Veterinary Colleges 
during the two winter sessions of their attendance. 
Your committee hope that the Colleges may soon take the 
initiative in an extended curriculum of study, which will not 
only justify but demand additions to the list of subjects on 
which future practitioners of the veterinary art have to be 
examined by this College. 
Two of Air. Ernes' propositions are not open to the objec- 
tion of even apparently precipitating reforms. The one is 
the written examination as adopted by the Royal College of 
Surgeons and other institutions, which should be provided 
for at no very distant date. Students to be examined at the 
close of the present session might fairly urge that they had 
been taken by surprise if they were required to undergo a 
written as well as an oral examination, but this would not 
hold good for another year. 
No such objection can be offered with reference to the 
examination of students by the side of living subjects on which 
they will have hereafter to practise the healing art. 
Your committee are painfully aware of the fact that the 
Colleges and their students suffer in the eyes of the world from 
the complete lack of practical tact, manipulative dexterity, or 
quick-sightedness of'many who seek to enter on their duties 
as veterinary surgeons as soon as they have received a diploma. 
It is, therefore, of vital importance that, with the co-opera- 
tion of the teaching Colleges, the Royal College of Veterinary 
Surgeons should at once institute a practical examination of 
candidates for its diploma. The veterinary section of the 
