670 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE OF PROFESSOR SIMONDS 
veterinary science upon its true and proper basis, I feel satisfied 
that I shall have no cause to regret the attempt : but it must be 
borne in mind by you, that I am no practised teacher. Up to 
the present moment, never have I ventured to address an audi- 
ence as a lecturer; and l can, in truth, assure you, that nothing 
less than a sense of duty and devotion to the interests and on- 
ward progress of our common profession could have induced me to 
place myself in the situation I now occupy. If I fail I shall still 
have the satisfaction of feeling that I have endeavoured to perform 
my duty in a noble cause. 
With these few preliminary remarks I throw myself on your 
consideration ; and 1 ask you kindly to give me your attention 
while I attempt to enter more fully into this subject, which 
needs no laboured efforts to prove its importance. As illustrative 
of this assertion, I would direct your notice to a fact which many, 
I fear, would fain smother. That, notwithstanding the immense 
value of our horses, it falls far short of that of our cattle. Mr. 
Youatt, an authority to whom I shall have occasion frequently to 
refer you, states, in the introduction of his excellent work on 
Cattle, “that if an ox is not individually so valuable as a horse, 
yet, in the aggregate, cattle constitute a much greater proportion 
of the wealth of the country; for, although Great Britain con- 
tains a million and a half of horses, she has to boast of more than 
eight millions of cattle, unrivalled in the world !” These are not 
speculative opinions, but deductions drawn, I may venture to say, 
from statistical facts. 
Is it not, then, matter of great surprise, that so long a time 
has been allowed to elapse, and so few efforts made to preserve 
and to secure the possession of so much wealth ; that men calling 
themselves Englishmen, ever jealous of their rights and liberties, 
should have been found opposing with all their energies any re- 
form in the education of the veterinary pupil, which would have 
tended to the preservation of one of Britain’s bulwarks, identified 
as it is with our agricultural prosperity, and with the comforts 
and the continuance of life? If, in a pecuniary point of view, 
we have been so regardless of our interests, it must be matter of 
even greater surprise, that the finer feelings of our nature, or that 
principle which we all boast of being endowed with, namely, hu- 
manity — those sentiments which ennoble man — should not have 
forced upon us the necessity of exercising all our energies and 
our talents to alleviate the sufferings of animals unable to express 
by words the pain they are enduring : animals which it pleased 
God in the beginning to create for our use, over which he gave us 
dominion, but, at the same time, placed them under our protection 
and our care. What said your talented preceptor, and my es- 
