A REPLY TO AY. J. G. 
145 
us, if displayed in such characters and colours. As regards the 
professor, what the profession was and is, within his long career 
as its head, requires no wizard to shew up; and it is not un¬ 
natural to suppose, that he and the many who knew and valued 
him, seeing that what, if any thing, should have been a fair 
desire to discover and open up sources of improvement, whether 
in the elementary or matured grades of the profession, was 
seized on by some as a means to vilify and despoil him, should 
hold back, or lend but a lukewarm hand to claims and sugges¬ 
tions mixed up with so unjust and unworthy materials. It had 
the effect, at the time I more particularly allude to, to obstruct 
and injure the cause and the claims of the profession; and the 
violence and outcry was deprecated, disclaimed, and denounced 
by w'ell-nigh all that we could expect to see take the lead in any 
general aims or efforts towards professional improvement and 
respectability. I am prompted to say all this, because I read 
W. J. G.’s communication with a feeling of distaste, as too 
much conceived in this injudicious and hurtful temper and tone. 
Our status is not so very low and degraded as he depicts ; neither 
is Mr. Coleman so mercenary, or opposed to our credit or im¬ 
provement: and on this let the verdict of ail veterinarians pro¬ 
nounce between us. 
Some who may honestly, but impetuously and irreflectively, 
call out how little has been done or is doing to advance the in¬ 
terests or improvement of the profession, forget that 1802 and 1832 
are very different periods, and extraordinarily so when referred to 
as eras in the veterinary world. Come, I call on those who are 
sceptical, dr occasionally bitten with a fit of carping, to indulge in 
a retrospective and comparative glance. To compare small things 
with great:—the artizan chips off huge and very self-demonstra¬ 
tive pieces from a rough unformed block, and appears to be giving 
it shapes and forms with satisfactory rapidity; but when he comes 
to more finely mould and polish its proportions, the progress is 
less perceptible, and seems wonderfully retarded. Well; look at 
veterinary science and veterinarians in the last century and in 
this. The strides they have made in knowledge and respectability 
have been great and rapid; but these cannot continue to be so 
eminently evident: the block is rough hewn, and more. And 
under whom has this change principally grown up and been 
achieved ? At the eleventh hour shall we cavil at and seek to 
withdraw all consideration from him. True, veterinarians may 
owe much to themselves; but the profession ought not, and the 
great bulk does not, forget that it has been under Mr. Coleman, 
and from the parent institution, that what we are, at the least so 
far as we have advanced, has emanated. If under succeeding pro¬ 
ven. v. x 
