EDINBURGH VETERINARY COLLEGE. 
701 
apply, and did we act in the same spirit of retaliation, then 
should we, most undoubtedly, be departing from that honor- 
able position which we, as professional men, are bound to 
uphold and respect. 
I should not now have requested your kind permission to 
insert this letter, were I not aware that very many worthy 
men who graduate from the London Veterinary College leave 
that edifice with a well-marked antipathy to their fellow 
graduates of Edinburgh, but from what cause I am unable 
to comprehend. It seems strange that tw T o practitioners, 
bearing the warrants of two separate colleges, and having 
the same object in view, and who, by receiving their diplomas, 
are in a manner vowed to support and advance their 
profession, no sooner meet on the world’s highway than he, 
whose diploma boasts not of royalty, is looked down upon as 
inferior, no matter what his abilities are ; no matter what his 
education may have cost him ; all goes for nothing in the 
estimation of the party from the royal college, though he may 
be anything but what he ought to be. 
We must look to other causes than to healthy business 
competition for a solution of this problem ; and amongst the 
foremost we somehow or other look to the periods between 
entering on college studies and quitting them. What though a 
rival spirit should at present exist between our two colleges ? 
— is the profession therefore to suffer in its onward progress 
and in the estimation of the public, who by-the-bye, cannot 
always perceive the preponderating qualities of the diploma 6 ? 
Surely not ! and I hope the day is not far distant when the 
amount of money paid for a diploma will be not a fancied 
guarantee as to the superior qualifications of the owner. 
“The Cheap Certificate of Professor DicFs Scotch School ” may 
become as potent in the hands of a man who has the interests 
of his calling at heart, as that of any other veterinary college 
in Europe. People generally prize that most which they 
have been at most pains to acquire, and if a diploma is easily 
gained it is often as lightly valued. My diploma, qualifying 
me as a member of the Edinburgh Veterinary College, was 
only earned by a careful and arduous course of study, and 
that after having served a longer apprenticeship than many 
do in both their studies. It bears the names of men as 
examiners, than whom none are superior in their several 
departments of science in this country; and as to my teachers 
their equals for persevering industry and careful inculcation 
of solid principles into the minds of students are seldom to 
be met with ; and when I see and hear of students being re- 
jected at the tribunal which 1 have passed, gaining a diploma, 
