276 
SECOND ANNUAL MEETING 
parative barbarity ; farriers were at that day the only practiti¬ 
oners, and but little knowledge, and less character, existed 
among them. Since then there had, most undoubtedly, been 
great improvement; and he trusted that we still were in a state 
of progressive amelioration. Great harm, however, had been 
done by the indiscriminate admission into the profession of per¬ 
sons who were little better than the old farriers; men void of 
education and respectability, and who could never reflect any 
credit upon the school at St. Pancras. The gates of that 
institution, through which candidates had to pass into the pro¬ 
fession, had been thrown open so widely, that many had crowded 
through who ought to have been arrested at the portal. It is 
true that the pass had been, of late, contracted; that regula¬ 
tions had been framed to put some check to this; but all had 
not been done that ought to have been; and, in fact, much re¬ 
mained to be done. 
At this advanced day of improvement the medical examiners 
still retained their places, little to their own credit, and less to 
our advantage; for they it is who are mainly in fault for the ad¬ 
mission among us of so many men destitute of education and 
respectability. 
So long as the profession is made up of such a heterogenous 
mass, so long is it impossible that its members can harmonize and 
amalgamate: it can only be when respectability ana education 
shall be found to be universally diffused among us that any thing 
like professional harmony can exist, I will conclude, Gentlemen, 
with giving you, “ The Veterinary Profession, and Professional 
Unanimity.” 
Mr. Youait , being called upon by the President for a toast, 
said, that the Chairman had not given a flattering, but, he feared, 
a too accurate account of the present; state of the veterinary 
profession; he would, however, beg leave to give the foster- 
mother of that profession—“ The Veterinary College”—from 
which it had derived those supplies of mental food, which had 
not, indeed, nourished it to maturity, but which had, at least, 
enabled it to reach its present growth. This, he continued, is a 
toast which comes home to the business and bosom of every one 
