ABUSES AT THE ENGLISH VETERINARY COLLEGE. 39 
lose him, for there is work enough at the College for him which 
he is highly qualified to execute. 
It has been formerly asked, “what has the Veterinary College 
done for the nation ?” I answer MUCH, but not half what it might 
have done in the time. Where are the Veterinary Transactions that 
were to have been published? Ay, “ where are they? ” Where 
are the works — Experiments on Animals, Reports of Cases — that 
should have been published? To the students of the day the in- 
creasing knowledge of the professors might have been in some 
degree imparted; but to the world and the students of former days 
it is lost. 
I consider that the College ought to have every thing within its 
own walls, without the pupils being compelled to travel three or 
four miles to hear lectures. There ought most decidedly to be 
another lecturer on the diseases of all domesticated animals. The 
present Professor cannot attend to the whole; no single individual 
can do it. A professor should be appointed on botany and the 
first principles of agriculture; and, if it were possible, a farm 
should be attached: and why not a lecturer on general comparative 
anatomy ? 
To shew the want of additional lecturers, or greater industry, 
I would refer to the last session, during which Mr. Sewell deli- 
vered, I believe — and I was a constant attendant there — only ten 
lectures between the 10th of April and the 17th of June, being ten 
weeks. Illness was assigned as a cause for this, and with some 
truth; but the general opinion was that it was more something 
else mingling with it — that there was a systematic spinning out of 
his lectures. Few, indeed, were sorry for the loss of them, and 
rarely half the students attended when they were delivered. They 
were unwilling to lose their time, or to travel from distant parts of 
the town or the country, when they might not hear any lecture at 
all; for the Professor never had the good manners to give notice 
that he did not mean to lecture, or could not lecture ; nor did he once 
offer an apology, however long he was absent. It was no better 
the session before, when, out of nearly two months, I only heard 
him lecture twice. It was little better during some of the last 
years of the late lamented Mr. Coleman ; but in him illness really 
existed. I, therefore, say, that if old gentlemen occupy these im- 
portant situations, and to whom, as a matter of course, illness will 
oftener occur, they ought to be prepared with a tolerable substitute, 
so that students should not be at such a loss as they have been at 
this College. 
I do complain of the fact, and it was the complaint of the whole 
of the students, that although it so often happened that there were 
no lectures, no notice of it on the previous day, or even on that 
