56 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
patients there, with a view to removal to its hospital here” 
Could not something be effected, isolated as the College 
stands, by means of a caravan , such as racers are travelled 
about the country in, to be kept at the institution in readi- 
ness to transport, whenever called for, sick or lame horses 
from any part of London, or even from some certain distance 
around the metropolis, to the College? The cost of main- 
taining such a means of transport would not be great, 
while the convenience of it would be likely to please many 
of the subscribers to, and friends of, the institution, who 
would prefer having their horses and cattle treated at the 
College to sending them elsewhere. 
Reflecting on some melancholy instances of pupils who 
have been known to enter, and managed to “pass ” through 
the College, with an education which has hardly enabled 
them to “ write an ordinary note of business, or spell the 
most common words correctly,” we are glad to see Professor 
Simonds suggesting the following of an example which has 
been set by both the Company of Apothecaries and the 
Royal College of Surgeons. Both these medical bodies have 
instituted preliminary examinations, of a high scholastic 
but non-medical nature; though the latter has made this 
regulation compulsory only upon their “Fellows/ 5 not re- 
quiring it, as yet, of ordinary “Members.” Our readers 
will remember that we published, in our number for October, 
1852, (vol. xxv, p. 576, et sequent.) similar conditions on 
which pupils were admitted to veterinary schools in France. 
Whether it would be politic or advisable to enforce equally 
advanced requirements of the veterinary pupil of our own 
country, might become matter for consideration. That some 
scholastic qualification should be called for, we are quite of 
Professor Simonds’s opinion. 
And this appears the more manifest, when we come to 
read, following this suggestion, another, having for its object 
an extension of the present College education of the pupil. 
This, it is proposed, should be effected through the addition 
of a short summer course of study to a long winter course ; 
there being, in such additional course, taught practical 
