479 
THE VETERINARIAN, AUGUST 1, 1856. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. 
Cicero. 
ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
OF ENGLAND. 
The Royal Agricultural Society has just brought to a 
successful issue another of its annual meetings. 
This year the honour was reserved for the county of Essex 
to receive the Society, as the representative of the home 
district, and Chelmsford was the town chosen as the place of 
gathering. It is somewhat singular that a county so entirely 
agricultural as Essex is, and which stands second to none in 
practical farming and can boast also of its Hobbses and 
Mechis, among the scientific cultivators of its soil, should so 
long have remained without a visit from the Society. With the 
causes of this delay we have not to do, for professedly purely 
agricultural matters interest us less than those relating to our 
own profession. 
We, however, are of opinion that our pages are rightly and 
profitably occupied by a discussion of the principles of Agri- 
culture, and especially in their bearing upon the breeding and 
rearing of domesticated animals, for we believe agricultural 
science to be so intimately inwrought and blended with veteri- 
nary medicine that either must flourish or decline as the other 
rises or falls. Beside this agriculture is to be regarded as the 
parent of the veterinary art, for had not the Odiham Society ? 
shortly after its foundation, taken measures to improve the 
then state of our science in all which related to the medical 
treatment of animals, it is impossible to tell how long England 
would have remained without a veterinary school, even with 
the example of France before her eyes. 
However much, as a profession, we may be indebted to the 
patrons of the turf and the hunting field for our present 
position, we owe none the less to the agriculturist and 
