592 
A LETTER FROM PROFESSOR DICK. 
To the Editors of “ The Veterinarian .” 
Gentlemen, — As you published in your last Number the letters 
of Messrs. Spooner, Gabriel and Mayer, which also appeared in 
“ The Mark Lane Express,” on the 18th ult., I shall feel much 
obliged by your publishing the following reply. 
I am, Gentlemen, your’s truly, 
W. Dick. 
To the Editor of “ The Mark Lane Express .” 
Edinburgh Veterinary College, 
10th Sept., 1845. 
Sir, — I HAVE delayed troubling you with some remarks, which I 
feel necessary in consequence of the assertions contained in the 
letters of Messrs. Spooner, Gabriel, and Mayer, in your paper of 
the 18th ult., in the expectation that those gentlemen would have 
replied to my letter published in the same paper, and have given 
some explanations that might have prevented my troubling you 
again on the subject of the Examinations at this School in April 
1844 ; but as they have not done so, I now beg to make a few ob- 
servations on their joint letter, because in it they now not only 
find fault with the examinations, but also assert that the education 
of the students was “ both limited and defective.” 
In the Report it is stated, that there were “ no examinations on 
Chemistry — none on Materia Medica — none on Physiology, none 
on the Diseases of Cattle that deserved the name.” In the joint 
letter of the reporters, however, we find it stated, that “ the ex- 
amination on these important points shewed that their education 
was both limited and defective ;” but how the examinations could 
shew this, when it is declared in the Report that there was no ex- 
amination at all on these “ important points,” I am at a loss to 
conceive, unless I am to suppose that, when the reporters “ most 
solemnly and deliberately aver that every word contained in the 
Report, with reference to the examinations, is true in every parti- 
cular,” they have stated so only in jest. Yes; it appears that, while 
they were stating that they are ready to prove that they have stated 
“ the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” they now 
admit that when they stated there were no examinations on the 
“ important points” already quoted, they merely meant to “ declare 
that the pupils were neither strictly nor extensively examined.” 
