THE EDINBURGH VETERINARY COLLEGE. 593 
This is giving a new turn to the discussion ; it is not now the neg- 
lect of the “ important points,” but that the students were not 
sufficiently examined ; and yet in another part of this most extra- 
ordinary Report it is complained that they were too much examined, 
because some gentlemen present chanced to ask some questions, 
which, as the examination was an open and public one, any person 
might have naturally thought proper to do, as had been the prac- 
tice on former occasions : and as many who were present were likely 
at some future time to have occasion for the services of the candi- 
dates for diplomas, they had a right, I think, to be fully satisfied 
as to their qualifications. The reporters then go on to express their 
“ regret that so many young men should be considered fit to enter on 
a professional vocation so lamentably ignorant of subjects, a know- 
ledge of which is so indispensable to a veterinary surgeon.” But 
what subjects do they intend to say they were ignorant of? If 
they mean those already mentioned, I ask, how do the reporters 
know they were ignorant of them, since they state there were “ no 
examinations on some of them” and that especially on the Diseases 
of Cattle there was “ none that deserved the name ?” At the 
same time, however, they allow in another part of the Report, that 
the students here shewed that they were much better acquainted 
with Cattle Pathology than, “ their confreres ” in the south, and 
that, too, notwithstanding the liberal allowance of £200 a-year to- 
wards their tuition from the Royal Agricultural Society of Eng- 
land. Now, if the examinations on the Diseases of Cattle that did 
not deserve a name shewed that the students here were much 
better acquainted with that branch of their profession than “ their 
confreres” in the south, I ask, is it not a natural inference that, if 
they had been examined on the other “ important points,” they 
would, in all probability, have shewn that they were equally supe- 
rior on those subjects? I haVe been prevented by a designed ar- 
rangement either of the Council or its official organ, from being 
present at the examinations, although an appointed Examiner of 
the students of the London School ; and I cannot, therefore, from 
personal observation, give any opinion of those students who were 
examined at that school at the corresponding examinations ; but I 
am not without evidence of their qualifications in comparison with 
my pupils; for on a recent occasion, when two pupils of the London 
School and one of mine were candidates for an appointment as 
veterinary surgeon to a regiment of cavalry, theirs were rejected 
and mine passed with great eclat , and that, too, after a much more 
extended examination than the Council propose they should under- 
go for the diplomas. And on another occasion, when the Farmers’ 
and Graziers’ Mutual Cattle Association offered a prize of <£25 for 
the best Essay on pleuro-pneumonia among cattle, on which occa- 
