ROYAL COLLEGE OF VETERINARY SURGEONS. 307 
and that it would be highly desirable the English and Scotch Boards should 
be upon one and the same footing, so far as their different arrangements 
permit. 
E. Mathew, 
E. N. Gabriel, 
W. A. Cherry. 
The number of candidates who have received the diplomas of 
the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons is one hundred and 
ninety-six ; of these, one hundred and fourteen graduated at the 
Royal Veterinary College in London, and eighty-two at the Vete- 
rinary College in Edinburgh. 
From the year 1840 to 1844 a Committee, elected at a public 
general meeting of the profession, assembled to consider the de- 
sirability of obtaining a Royal Charter of Incorporation, and named 
the Veterinary Committee, were unceasingly and indefatigably 
employed in obtaining that object : not only was the most unre- 
mitting attention and great individual labour required for this pur- 
pose, but certain expenses had to be incurred, to meet which a 
public subscription was opened, and liberally responded to by the 
profession, the sum of £250 having been contributed. When, 
however, the triumphant reward of their labours, the obtainment 
of the Royal Charter of Incorporation, was carried, it was found 
that the necessary official and other expenses were so heavy, that, 
to meet them, a loan was obliged to be had recourse to : they were 
met, but the debt incurred in so doing was thrown on the re- 
sponsibility of the Committee, upon whom, until the early part 
of last year, it rested. At that time, however, your Council, tak- 
ing into its consideration the extreme injustice of those liabilities 
being allowed to continue, elected a Committee, consisting of 
Messrs. Braby, Ernes, Gabriel, Henderson, King, and Mayhew, to 
inquire into the matter, when the above facts were elicited by the 
Committee, as also that the sum then actually owing was £250. 
Your Council, on receiving this report, decided that the liabilities 
hitherto borne by the Veterinary Committee be undertaken by the 
Council themselves ; thus at once freeing individual members, 
and leaving the debt to be refunded by the body at large, for 
whose benefit and improvement it had been incurred. 
Your Coifhcil hitherto had been almost unremittingly employed, 
not in defending their own acts — for they, made known to you nearly 
as soon as decided on, must speak for themselves — but in expos- 
ing interested mis-statements, in exploding unfounded accusations, 
and disproving reports, utterly groundless it is true, but which still, 
