VETERINARY STUDENTS’ DINNER. 103 
We were lately desired to visit an elderly lady: she was de¬ 
scended from a noble family, but was in decayed circumstances, 
and had outlived all her friends but one,—an old blind and deaf 
spaniel, scarcely able to crawl, but whose feeble powers were 
principally employed in creeping as close as it could to its mis¬ 
tress, and resting its head upon her lap* A careless girl had, on 
that morning, suffered it to be run over, and its back was broken. 
We found it lying on the sofa, nestling closer to her than ever, 
and every now and then turning up its sightless, pearled eyes, as 
it were to gaze upon her, with an intensity of expression (if we 
may dare to say so of a dog) which we shall never forget. We 
ventured to recommend that a speedy termination should be put 
to that torture which no skill could relieve. A reluctant consent 
was obtained: “I shall not be long after her!” said she. We 
discharged a painful duty, and, in less than a week, the old lady 
died broken-hearted. Were we merely excited here?-But 
we are wandering into a subject not uninteresting, we are per¬ 
suaded, to our excellent examiner, but foreign to the purpose of 
this article. 
The Chairman next proposed the health of “The Professor,” 
with whom he had lived in the strictest friendship for forty years, 
and the more he knew of him, the more he respected him. He 
was elected to the office, which he had so long filled with credit 
to himself and advantage to the profession,—not because he was 
a groom or a jockey, for he should be sorry to see his friend on 
the back of a restive horse, fearing that too soon he would be off 
again,—but because he had successfully devoted himself to the 
pursuit of physiology, and had given to the world a treatise on a 
certain point of physiology, the merit of which was, to the present 
day, justly appreciated. He was selected from many who would 
have thought themselves honoured by the appointment, at the 
concurrent advice of Mr. Cline and Drs. Fordyce and Crawford ; 
and since he had occupied the Professor’s chair, things had gone 
on prosperously at the College. The Chairman alluded to the 
improved ventilation of the cavalry stables; the establishment of 
a veterinary pharmacopoeia, instead of the farrago of drugs with 
which, reasoning from false analogy, the horse had been drenched; 
and he referred to the honourable distinction conferred on the 
