776 
Mli. MAYERS ORATION. 
men, who are now passing through your curriculum at College, 
and upon whose support its very existence depends. It offers 
great and invaluable advantages to you. It is upon its arena of 
debate that the youthful aspirant to fame tries his unfledged pini- 
ons, until they have become sufficiently feathered and strength- 
ened, to waft him, at a future day, into the noble and intermin- 
able fields of science, there to cull all the moral and intellectual 
stores with which they every where abound. At associations 
like these, light and truth are elicited by debate, and they afford 
the fullest opportunities of sharpening the wits of youth, and 
enabling them to fix a proper estimation on their respective 
powers and capacities. It often gives an impetus to the youthful 
intellect which is not lost through life, and is instrumental in 
carrying him up and urging him forwards to the highest attain- 
ments which his profession affords ; it is, therefore, my sincere 
prayer that it may form an integral portion of the Royal Veteri- 
nary College through many a revolving year. 
When we take a retrospective view of our profession, and com- 
pare its present position with what it was fifty years ago, we have 
great cause for congratulation and thankfulness on account of the 
progress we have made ; and although we may have moved 
rather slowly along, compared with some individuals in this in- 
tellectual steam-going age, yet we have preserved a forward 
movement, steadily and surely. 
I shall not enter into the more early history of veterinary 
science and art: that has already been done by far more able men 
than me; but I shall make some few observations upon the 
later portion of its history, more particularly under the auspices 
of Professor Coleman. 
At the period when Mr. Coleman assumed the professorship at 
the St. Pancras College, the veterinary art was a complete chaotic 
mass, without science or system to direct its operations. Its prac- 
titioners were mere empirics, without education, and consequently 
ignorant in their calling, and not even tolerated in respectable 
society. In fact, at so low an ebb was the art, that it was with 
great difficulty the founders of the College could obtain an indi- 
vidual qualified to fill the chair; and when the selection was 
made, the choice fell upon a foreigner. 
What are we now, Gentlemen? As a professional body, re- 
spected and respectable. If we are not so, it is our own faults : 
and, although we have not as yet attained our true position in 
society as professional men, yet the day is not far distant when 
we shall take our true relative place, in connexion with the Vete- 
rinary College, which will enable us to exalt its valuable interests, 
and secure its onward course to something like perfection. 
