640 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
Professor Spooner, assisted by Mr. Varnell, will superintend 
the hospital practice, and be ever ready, in his forcible and 
convincing style, to explain the causes, nature, and conse- 
quences of each individual case of disease. Mr. Varnell, too, 
will give you valuable clinics day by day ; and Mr. Morton 
be ever willing to aid you by his explanations of the laws of 
chemistry, and to counsel you by his good advice. 
I have yet a few more things to place before you, and to 
say something also upon my own division of science, cattle 
pathology. It is this link which indissolubly binds our art 
to that of agriculture, and brings the practiser of each not 
only into daily contact, but friendly union. It is this bond 
also which unites the interests of the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England with those of this Institution. Notwith- 
standing these things, we are apt sometimes to complain of 
the little support which the agricultural community gives as a 
whole to this section of veterinary medicine. We should 
remember, however, that if interests so identical as these 
alluded to are even temporarily separated, they can only be 
so by some more powerful influence or force. What is there, 
it might be asked, so powerful to effect this as ignorance 
combined with prejudice ? Village blacksmiths, cow leeches, 
herdsmen, and shepherds, are the representatives of this 
power on one side, and the uneducated, old fashioned, and 
needy farmers on the other. Happy it is that effects pass 
away more or less rapidly with the removal of their cause ; 
for, were it otherwise, we should long since have despaired 
of seeing cattle pathology in its true position. Education, 
skill, and enterprise, have been for some time silently 
undermining this citadel; now they are openly attacking it, 
and ere long, its strong walls will lie mouldering in the dust. 
Remember, that anatomy, physiology, and the principles of 
pathology, form the vanguard of one ally ; and agricultural 
chemistry, botany, with the laws of vegetation, that of the 
other. It is you, gentlemen, who constitute one division 
of the army, and will you as Englishmen turn cowards? 
No ! Onwards, onwards, cc Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs 
of war!” and Victory herself will place the conqueror’s 
wreath upon your brow. The Royal Agricultural Society 
stands firmly by our side, and the same support which 
it freely gave at first in the maintenance of the lectures 
on cattle pathology it gives now. The liberality of this 
Society cannot be questioned, nor ought its intentions ever to 
have been. Besides its annual grant to this institution, it 
bestows, year by year, large sums of money as prizes for the 
best essays on subjects intimately connected with the ad- 
