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THE VETERINARIAN, JUNE 1, 1851. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
The Report presented us by the Council, for the Collegiate 
year, 1850-51, of the transactions of the Royal College of 
Veterinary Surgeons during the past twelve months, is, to use 
a hackneyed and not over-refined epithetical phrase, “ short 
and sweet “ short,” since, after taking out the finance, 
it occupies but little more than a couple of pages of our 
space ; “ sweet,” since in that short space it affords assurances 
of our College being in the enjoyment of “ improved prospects;” 
and assigns “ this improved state of things” as a reason why 
nothing beyond “ a brief abstract of their proceedings” is re- 
quired, “ now that the differences of opinion, divisions of in- 
terests, and diversities of action, hitherto existing, are nearly 
passed away.” 
In the amount of pleasurable feelings created by an announce- 
ment such as this, we will confess inferiority to nobody, either 
in or out of the profession. The corporate body, since its inau- 
guration, has had its share of agitation. Of intestine commo- 
tion and peristaltic action it has had enough, and somewhat 
more than enough ; we therefore cannot but express ourselves 
too happy to find that not only is dissension at an end, but that 
the present offers every prospect of improvement. 
The corporate house, certainly, divided and subdivided as it 
was at one time against itself, evinced fearful symptoms of 
being in that critical state of equipoise that serious apprehen- 
sions were felt by many lest a single step taken in the wrong 
direction might have endangered its stability ; and what would 
have rendered its declension the more lamentable and vexa- 
tious, would have been, as the inevitable consequence of it, 
that, so far from either party being benefitted in any way by it, 
everybody concerned could not fail, in the end, to experience 
more or less detriment from it ; neither would the public in 
general have escaped unscathed by such a calamity. The pro- 
fessors and practitioners of our art neither would nor could have 
