790 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
having just passed your Matriculation Examination I beg 
more particularly to address myself, in the sincere hope that 
the remarks I have to offer will prove of service, by sug- 
gesting how your time while students may be most plea- 
surably and profitably spent, and how in after life you may 
adorn and elevate the important profession to which you 
aspire to belong. 
This Institution has been established for more than two 
thirds of a century, but during the greater part of this period 
no proof was required of the possession of a scholastic educa- 
tion by those desirous of becoming its pupils. Five years 
ago the Governors, inspired by the educational spirit of the 
times, passed a regulation by which it was rendered com- 
pulsory for every one, prior to being admitted on the roll 
of students, to give evidence of their proficiency in dicta- 
tion, reading aloud, and the first four rules of arithmetic. 
For five years this examination has been conducted by the 
professors ; and so satisfied have we been of the good effects 
resulting from the new regulation, that we recently suggested 
to the Governors that it would be desirable to gradually 
increase the extent and stringency of the Matriculation 
Examination, and that the responsibility of conducting it 
might be transferred from our shoulders to those of some 
independent body. Such suggestions have been adopted, 
and it is now the pleasure and satisfaction of my colleagues 
and myself to know that, previously to the opening of the 
present session, the Matriculation Examination has been, 
and that it henceforth will be, entrusted to the College of 
Preceptors, a body of gentlemen well known for their long 
experience in testing the preliminary or scholastic know- 
ledge of large and many classes of persons, including those 
desirous of entering the sister profession of human medicine. 
Of the great importance of a sound preliminary education 
to the veterinary student there can be no question. With- 
out it the reading of medical works must be of little 
use to him, as he is unable to comprehend, not only the 
arguments of his authors, but even the meaning of many 
of the words which they necessarily employ ; and from the 
absence of that mental training which a good education 
effects, he fails to recognise general principles and the 
inestimable value of the influence which they exercise upon 
his art. Moreover, so long as the veterinary student re- 
mains uneducated his attendance on lectures becomes dis- 
tasteful and unprofitable from the difficulty he experiences 
in understanding his teachers, while the labour of the pro- 
fessors, let the interest which they throw into their work or 
