FKKNCIl ARMY VETKRiNARY SURGEONS. 
821 
an allowance of 400 francs (£20) for lodging, and of 300 francs 
(£15) for extra expenses. This is their station in the cavalry, 
and the recompense of their merit and services. 
Your commission thinks that the law, in its just solicitude, 
has provided a sufficient remuneration for the services which the 
regimental veterinary surgeons render, and propose that you pro¬ 
ceed to the order of the day.”—“ (Adopted.) ” 
This petition, containing facts that could not be contradicted, 
and reasoning calmly but irresistibly urged—the prayer of those 
whom education had made gentlemen, not to be banished from 
that society wdiich alone could be congenial to them—but to 
have those rights restored which were never designed to be 
wrested from them, and the withholding of which argues equal 
injustice and absurdity,—this is, in the opinion of M. Hector 
Daulnay, “ to set up a ridiculous pretension, and to exhibit the 
very extreme of presumption ! ” Indeed ! ! We comprehend not 
the delusion under which this gentleman laboured ; yet from 
what we see in our own country, where the claims of the veteri¬ 
nary surgeon are more worthily acknowledged, we can well 
imagine that there are those so bigotted, or so interested, or 
so ignorant, as to deem every claim of the poor veterinarian, 
even to subscribe to the funds of his own school, or to occupy 
a seat at a board which he alone can competently fill, ** ridi¬ 
culous pretension, and the very extreme of presumption ! ” 
We envy not the feelings of such men, wherever they are to be 
found. But the veterinary surgeons of France, what say they ? 
Why they now, for the first time, combine together, and no 
few^er than 75 of them are guilty of another act of “ ridiculous 
pretension and extreme presumption,” and present a petition to 
the same purport to the same assembly. 
Let us see with what reception it meets. M. de Lariboissiere 
is reporter here. The sitting was on December 22, 1832. 
He thus addresses the chamber: — 
** Seventy-five veterinary surgeons, attached to the cavalry, 
protest against the rank assigned to them in the army. Hitherto 
associated with the sub (non-commissioned) officers of the regi¬ 
ments, they think that they ought to be classed among the 
commissioned officers. Their pretensions are founded on the 
importance of the duties which they discharge, and the previous 
education which they must receive. They observe that they are 
still treated like the farrier-majors of the old cavalry corps, 
although the art which they profess has become a veritable 
science, following the progress of every other, and multiplying 
every day its points of contact with them. 
“ They believe that the services which they have to render to 
