410 
ROYAL AND CENTRAL SOCIETY OF AGRICULTURE: 
A REPORT OF THE MEETING FOR THE RECEPTION AND CONSIDER- 
ATION OF MEMOIRS AND OBSERVATIONS ON PRACTICAL 
VETERINARY MEDICINE. 
Commissioners , MM. Girard, Huzard, and Yvaiit; 
M. Barthelemy, Reporter. 
Gentlemen, — The Society has received, for the meeting of 
1841, six collections of observations, containing, in the whole, 
fifty pathological cases; eight essays on different special sub- 
jects appertaining to the medical division of science, and which 
comprise in their details fifty-three cases and experiments ; com- 
prising, in the whole, a sum total of one hundred and three ac- 
cessions to our general knowledge with regard to subjects of ve- 
terinary medicine and surgery. It has also received an interest- 
ing paper on the use of soda as an addition to the diet of herbi- 
vorous animals; and two other important essays, one on a new 
method of shoeing horses, and the other on the social position of 
veterinary surgeons in Germany. 
The numerous works, and, more especially, the selection of the 
subjects which they contain — the scientific classification of the 
materials of which they are composed— the judicious appreciation 
of each particular fact — the logical deductions which are drawn 
from every statement or argument — the perspicuity, correctness, 
and accuracy of style in the majority of these works — tend not 
only to prove that a noble emulation is aroused, and a love of 
science diffused among veterinary surgeons, but also that this 
class of men, so useful, so indispensable to agriculture and to the 
cavalry, are daily rising in public estimation by means of their 
knowledge and the importance of the duties which they have to 
perform, and are escaping from that degraded social position in 
which ignorance of their real worth and services and old and de- 
spicable prejudices contributed to keep them. It cannot be too 
often repeated, that the period when veterinary surgeons were 
composed almost entirely of illiterate and uninformed persons is 
rapidly passing away. 
The Society, whose approbation the authors of these memoirs 
have shewn themselves so anxious to deserve, cannot sufficiently 
congratulate itself on the resolution passed at the period of its 
reorganization, namely, that of holding regular meetings for the 
reception of essays and observations on subjects connected with 
veterinary medicine. Hence these meetings have mainly contri- 
