INDIAN VETERINARY DEPARTMENT. 
499 
the breeding and rearing of the colt intrusted to, or directed 
by, a department, the members of which embrace, in their 
professional education, the physiology and principles of such 
knowledge ; and not transferred to the necessarily superficial 
and amateur knowledge of officers in the army, principally in 
the Infantry branch, who must have entered the service at an 
age which precluded even any chance of their having enjoyed 
the smallest observation, knowledge, or experience of any- 
thing in the way of horseflesh, beyond, perhaps, the pony 
mount, at their periodical holidays. Mr. Hodgson’s letter, 
in your March number, shows that this extraordinary transfer 
of duties took place on the death of Mr. Moorecroft, and 
well may Mr. Hodgson remark on the subject. “ If the 
knowledge of breeding, rearing and management of horses in 
health and disease, rendered veterinary surgeons of equal 
rank, ineligible, why should the pretensions to such knowledge 
render other officers eligible, not only to promotion, but also 
to officiate as veterinary surgeons? It would indeed be 
difficult to answer these questions.” The part which the 
veterinary surgeon attached to the stud now has to play, is, 
in my opinion, both humiliating to himself and derogatory to 
the character of his profession. His services which, I would 
fain hope, might and ought to be so eminently useful in a 
breeding establishment, are strictly confined to his hospital 
for the sick and lame. His opinion and professional respon- 
sibility is never called for, or made use of, in the selection and 
adaption of sire or dam ; and the breeding seems to be more 
a system of promiscuous intercourse, than the exercise of 
judgment and knowledge of the laws which obtain in animal 
reproduction. 
A principal veterinary surgeon, would, I trust, feel it his 
duty to the government he serves to assert the duties and 
usefulness of his profession, in such an all important depart- 
ment as the studs. And would of course make such sugges- 
tions for the general management and treatment of the horses 
with the army, as v r ould be conducive to the exigencies and 
benefit of the service. We should then not be subjected to 
circulars from head-quarters, detailing, for our information, the 
empirical ideas of any amateur on bursauttee or other disease. 
What would the members of the medical profession say to 
receiving, for their information, the treatment of Captain 
Anybody for fever and ague? The only information that w as 
elicited by the bursauttee correspondence, which was not 
ridiculous, was a fact stated by Captain Apperley, in reply 
to Mr. Page’s letter in the Lahore Chronicle, viz. : “ that he 
had no ill will or antagonism to veterinary surgeons, for that 
