THE FARMER’S CLUB. 
639 
expectation prevalent among those assembled on the occasion, that 
pleuro-pneumonia would form the subject of the lecture : this the 
President perceiving, or knowing beforehand, took care, however, at 
the commencement to repress, by stating, that as it was Mr. Cherry’s 
expressed intention to become a candidate for the prize of £50 
offered by the Royal Agricultural Society for the best essay on that 
subject, the members must, on the present occasion, excuse his silence 
on it any further than general allusion to it, since premature disclo- 
sures of his views and opinions on the subject might tend materially 
to detract from the novelty or merit of his intended essay. 
Desirous, therefore, of steering clear of the diseases of cattle, 
Mr. Cherry had to transfer his attention into some other province 
of the cattle department, in which the farmer or grazier would find 
himself, if not equally at least sufficiently interested ; and he could 
hardly have made a more fortunate hit than he did when he selected 
HYGIENE for his subject; one for which, all-important and full 
of interest and wide in range as it is, singularly enough, as Mr. 
Cherry remarked, in truth lacks in our mother tongue a name ! 
and therefore have we borrowed the French one, hygiene . 
In calling Mr. Cherry’s discourse “ a lecture,” we must not 
omit to add, that it was viva voce. We have reason to believe 
that it was his intention to have read most part or all of it from a 
roll of papers he held in his hand : so thoroughly, however, did 
his mind prove, as the issue shewed it to be, imbued with his 
subject-matter — so prepared was he to propound and prompt to 
answer in every department of it, that the result was, an oration full 
of matter of that description which carried with it the conviction 
that the lecturer had actually seen and felt and practised what he 
was discoursing about. He had not emerged “ fresh from college,” 
neither had he descended in his dressing-gown and slippers from 
his attic study into the lecture room. No ! — he had come out of 
the cattle-yard, out of the sheep-fold, out of the piggery ; he had 
come prepared to talk to “ farmers and graziers” in their own lan- 
guage ; to shew them in what manner and to what extent veterinary 
science could lend them aid in the care and management of their 
live stock, and the ways in which their routine management ad- 
mitted of improvement. And the result was, a discussion among 
the members present of an animated and highly interesting cha- 
