EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 55 
melioration is, in respect to the veterinary world, to be brought 
about. 
With the return of “ good times,” certainly we might anticipate 
that the number of horses kept for pleasure as well as business would 
be very considerably augmented. Cheap forage alone is in favour 
of this, and we have hardly had in our remembrance hay and corn 
cheaper than at present. But then, this, the farmers say, is 
“ at our cost.” Were the tax on horses lessened or removed that 
might do something towards the encouragement to keep more. 
What, however, as it appears to us, will in time bring about this 
augmentation more certainly, will be the abandonment of many 
miles of branch railway which at present do not, nor seem likely 
to, in our time, repay their cost of working ; and this cannot take 
place without giving rise to a proportionate increase in the em- 
ployment of horses and carriages for the purpose of conveying 
passengers over the roads running to and from such places as were 
before connected together by railway. 
These seem to us some of the vistas through which veterinarians 
may cast hopeful looks into futurity. Doubtless, there are others 
to which we at present possess no clue. May the realizations 
prove, say we, “ better” when they come, and speedy in coming; 
and may our next year’s volume open with a full and welcome 
account of them. 
AGAIN has the season come round when the fattest of the fat of 
the land is exhibited to the gaze of the admirers of good living ; 
and though much may be still urged against the wasteful obesity 
of many an animal, yet we are happy to observe a manifest im- 
provement for the better, — more attention to symmetry than to fatty 
unvvieldiness. There was one thing that particularly struck us, 
and that was, the improvement to be observed in the general cha- 
racter of the animals exhibited, — the symmetry was a decided im- 
provement upon last year’s exhibition ; but there were still enough 
of over-bred animals to shew the ill-effects of such a system. We 
were also much pleased at the care and judgment displayed by the 
judges in the awarding of the prizes; as in only two instances 
could we, with the nicest criticism, detect any obvious fault — one 
in the cattle, in which size and fatness were arrayed against sym- 
