201 
STRAY PAPERS ON VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE, 
ADDRESSED TO VETERINARY STUDENTS. 
By Thos. Walton Mayer, M.R.C. V.S., Newcastle, Staffordshire. 
[Continued from vol. xiv, page 539.] 
Ignorantia facti excusat ; ignorantia juris non excusat. 
Gentlemen, 
From circumstances to which I need not now refer, a consider- 
able period has elapsed since last I had the pleasure of addressing 
you on the important subject of veterinary jurisprudence. It was 
then my opinion that the subject was one of extreme moment 
to you; but more extensive acquaintance with, and, I trust, more 
mature experience in, the duties of my profession have taught me 
that it is no less a question of extreme importance to myself and 
every member of our corporate body. 
I confess, therefore, freely to you, that it is with great diffidence, 
nay, almost repugnance, that I again venture to direct your attention 
to this subject; because I feel how little I have to add to what 
you may already know, and how much what I say may be mis- 
represented and" misapplied. The importance of the subject and 
the difficulties of the case are, in some measure, increased when 
we take into consideration the statement contained in Mr. Good- 
win’s letter in the February number of this Journal, and which, I 
trust, has not escaped your notice. No man of any feeling can 
peruse that letter without sensations of shame — shame, that it 
should be promulgated to the world that in opinions on soundness 
we never agree, and cannot express in words what we mean — and 
shame, that it should for one moment be imagined that the public 
can get any sort of opinion they may desire from veterinary men. 
A Lawyer very properly remarks in this month’s Journal, “ that 
we ought not to be discouraged by the frequent differences of 
opinion among the eminent professors of the art.” Yet I cannot 
see how such differences are to be prevented so long as we cannot 
be brought to acknowledge any fixed principles in veterinary 
jurisprudence, whereby our opinions may be controlled and regu- 
lated. It is all very well to tell us that there is no difficulty with 
regard to law; that, legally, the question of soundness and un- 
soundness has been settled long ago : and so it has ; but this by no 
means removes the difficulties or solves the problem contained in 
