ISO THE FRENCH ARMY VETERINARY SURGEONS. 
more decided part. They avoid this species of injustice, and 
many of them end by forsaking their regiments. This can easily 
be conceived. Having to choose between the civil practice of their 
profession, which offers them at the same time ease and sure con- 
sideration, and that of their regiments, where they find neither 
one nor the other, and where, besides the absurd regulations 
degrading them even in the performance of their professional 
career — superiors who are ignorant of their science — veterinary 
surgeons, who are careless of what becomes of them, do not long 
hesitate what to do. If they belong to the army they are soon 
tempted to forsake it. They then begin to do well ; or, if they 
do not belong to it, they avoid engaging themselves, and they 
do better still. Such is, at this time, the strange embarassment 
in the administration of war, that at the same moment that we 
see the loss of our horses rapidly increasing everyday, we also see 
those abandoning them who are the most capable of lending them 
an efficacious help for the prevention or the remedy of the evil. 
I know very well that, should the state of things which I am 
now describing remain the same, some zealous and worthy young 
veterinary surgeons will follow the course that others have done, 
and attach themselves to the army at some time or other; but 
in what circumstance, and with what hope or profit? 
Some engage themselves with the hope that, by the time they 
have attained a more mature age, they will have learned the 
practice of a regiment; others, because they belong to poor fami- 
lies and calculate on being selected as military pupils, and pursue 
their studies and be kept at the school at the expense of the 
minister of war. But when the first have attained the age that 
they waited for, and when the second have finished their studies 
and accomplished the five years of service that they owed in re- 
turn to the state, both hasten to quit a career which offers them 
nothing for the present and nothing for the future. Thus the 
army, after having been at the expense of their education, and after 
having suffered from the inevitable errors of their first trials in 
practice, see themselves abandoned precisely at the moment 
when, by the experience that they may have acquired, they 
should have begun to be truly useful, and to repay their country 
for the shelter and support they have received. 
Suppose it to happen, that some laborious and enlightened men, 
forgetful of their own interests, as there are some among men of 
science, who have consented to remain in the regiment, and to 
serve it with zeal, would it not be shameful to class men so de- 
voted and so useful with the workmen of the regiment 1 Would 
it not be revolting injustice 1 
[To be continued.] 
