EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
539 
animal kingdom, that the pages of The VETERINARIAN will at 
all times be open to, and ourselves be happy to receive, the 
accounts of the proceedings of the epizootic department of the 
Epidemiological Society. And further, we do hope and trust, 
for the honour and benefit of veterinary science, that the mem- 
bers of our profession will, on this occasion, one and all, put 
their best foot foremost in administering to the culture of a 
branch of medical science having for its special object the over- 
shadowing and stifling of “ Invisible foes” no less “ to the hu- 
man race” than to brute kind at large. 
Under the head of “ Veterinary Jurisprudence” in our pre- 
sent No. appears a police report — that has pretty well “ gone 
the round of the papers” — respecting two dogs, the property of 
the late Mr. Dyce Sombre, which, it appears, Mr. Vines, at the 
request of their owner — deceased since that request was made — 
took under his charge. The facts of the case, as abridged in 
the “ report” and developed in Mr. Vines’ narrative, exhibit a 
contrast by no means in favour of the former when the evidence 
produced on the occasion comes to be examined. It appears 
that Mr. Vines, at his interview at Mivart’s Hotel with Mr. 
Sombre, having in the interval examined the dogs, agreed to 
take the one that had the distemper for 10.9. a week, inclusive 
of keep and medicine and attendance; and that, although the 
other required nothing of him in his medical capacity, yet that 
Mr. Sombre begged of him to take that likewise on the same 
terms. Mr. Sombre dying shortly after this transaction, Mrs. 
Sombre desires to have the dogs. Mr. Vines questions the 
propriety or legality of yielding up property possible or likely 
to be at some future period called in question; but is at length 
induced to do so through the assurance on the part of Mrs. 
Sombre’s solicitor that he (Mr. Vines) shall be held blameless. 
But when Mr. Vines comes to present, with the dogs, his 
account, made out according to what had transpired between Mr. 
Sombre and himself, it is objected to on the score of 10$. per 
week being an overcharge. For keep alone the charge, cer- 
tainly, might have been objected to ; but for keep and medicine 
and attendance, so far from its being an overcharge, the charge 
was an extremely moderate one. What! is a man in the 
capacity of Mr. Vines, who for fourteen years was the late 
Professor Coleman’s assistant as a teacher of anatomy at the 
Royal Veterinary College, and who is the author of a “ Prac- 
tical Treatise on Glanders and Farcy,” and of “A Critical In- 
