642 
THE APPRENTICESHIP CLAUSE. 
from school, now, as of yore, goes “ ’prenticed ” to the trade he is to 
follow. Apprenticehood is the stepping-stone from one to the 
other. As an apprentice, the boy learns the drudgery — the dirty 
work — of his future calling ; qualifying himself, slowly but surely, 
for the situation of master or director of the concern. How nu- 
merous are the minor but indispensably useful matters the sur- 
geon’s or veterinary surgeon’s apprentice learns while with his 
master, which are — seemingly on account of their very littleness 
— taken no cognizance of by the schools or hospitals ! Added to 
which, he cultivates an acquaintance with disease, wearing the 
very aspect in which he will have to behold it and prescribe for 
it when he himself comes to practise. Still another advantage 
presents itself to the veterinary apprentice, and that is, the time 
and leisure he will have afforded him to learn his duties at the 
forge. 
The late Professor (Coleman) was known to say, that “ the sons 
of grooms and farriers made the best veterinary surgeons and 
though, unqualified as the assertion stood, it seemed at the time 
deserving of condemnation, yet has it struck me that by it the 
Professor meant no more than that such persons generally turned 
out the best practitioners — at least better than young men of edu- 
cation who had never been known, prior to their coming to College, 
to enter a forge or a stable in their lives. And in this point of 
view Coleman was right. 
The grand object manifestly is, to amalgamate the two descrip- 
tions of knowledge — practice with theory, or theory with practice. 
Surgeons and veterinarians should be able to work with their 
hands as well as with their heads. And it has been with the 
laudable desire of accomplishing all this that the Council have 
come to the determination of making apprenticeship one of the 
conditions for examination and membership. 
Since, however, apprenticeship is found to operate disadvan- 
tageously to the veterinary schools, and since the College of Sur- 
geons —who until lately demanded an indentureship of five years 
— have abandoned it, it behoves us, we think, to re-consider the 
matter. It must be self-evident to every person at all con- 
versant with their proceedings, that the Council of the Royal Col- 
