PAST AND PRESENT STATE OF VETERINARY SCIENCE. Tfi 
has been satisfactorily ascertained, or what approaches to almost 
absolute certainty—by pointing out what remains to be known— 
by offering opportunities for research and investigation, imparts 
a stimulus to the students, and promotes, in a very material de¬ 
gree, the peculiar knowledge of the science or sciences which 
it professes to teach. 
But education, like the mind, cannot be lying upon its oars ; 
it either must be progressing, or it must retrograde ; it must 
be either collecting fresh facts and stores, or it becomes a non-en¬ 
tity, and resolves itself into the mists of darkness and error. 
Exactly in accordance with these views do we find education 
in the past and present state of our science. It has not increased 
the stores of knowledge with that rapidity which is desirable, 
though it has undeniably increased them. It has not offered any 
strong inducement for more extended observations and facts 
whereon to work. Why ? Because the system of our education 
has not been sufficiently carried out to diff use that extent of real 
veterinary knowledge which is absolutely necessary for the inte¬ 
rests and welfare of the science. Not that I mean to imply 
that the present system is so bad that it wants a total change—■ 
a subversion of the foundations whereon it rests. No; from my 
very heart I abhor the spirit of that man whose secret objects are 
of this kind ; and who, under the mask of improvement, would 
pull down the present system, merely to raise a superstructure 
adopted and carried out from a spirit of reckless change or 
malevolence. The system of public veterinary education, as 
originally laid out, and the foundations of which remain, are, in 
my opinion, liberal, and sufficient for all the purposes of effec¬ 
tually promoting and cultivating veterinary science, and enlarging 
the dignity of the profession. All that is wanted is, that these 
plans shall be carried into execution, and that there shall be 
raised upon the foundations so well laid in 1791, a superstruc¬ 
ture proportionate to the wants of its members : following, in 
this instance, the example of a genus of shell-fish called 
tlie Ammonite, that forms and lives in a chambered shell, 
which it has the power, as it increases in size and feels the in¬ 
convenience of want of room, of enlarging by the formation of 
new chambers, in which it may take up its abode, and which add 
materially to its capabilities and its value. 
But we proceed, secondly, to remark, that veterinary knowledge 
has been increased and established by the testimony of many ; 
so are the discrepancies which at present prevail in it likely to be 
reconciled—the future education of its members improved—and 
the progress of the science generally accelerated, by an associa¬ 
tion of its members. 
Need I refer your readers to the instances in which such an 
