006 
THK VETERINARY SCHOOL 
achieved such a triumph for our profession and for the country? 
Directing their attention to objects so important as these, I doubt 
not that our schools will soon resume the title which they once 
bore, Ecoles Royales vtttrinaires et d’economie rurale. 
The school of Toulouse will take this useful direction, studying 
especially, and as the very object for which it was founded, not 
only the diseases of the ox and the sheep, which as yet are less 
known than those of the horse, but every thing that is connected 
with the multiplication and the perfectioning of these valuable 
animals. 
As to you, gentlemen, students of our school, who come before 
us to-day to receive the reward of your industry and good con¬ 
duct, it will be little to have indicated the object at which you 
ought to aim, without having given you the means of attaining 
it. Each of your instructors has anxiously endeavoured to 
discharge this duty, by making you acquainted with the general 
principles which ought to guide your present studies and your 
future practice. If you have acquired the talent, the method, 
the tact of observation—if you have learned to study, our task 
will have been accomplished. It will be for you to follow out the 
lessons which we have inculcated. Veterinary science, like 
every other, is progressing, and it is impossible to assign its ulti¬ 
mate limits. How many important facts does one new idea 
sometimes unfold ! Into what sad errors do we sometimes fall, 
when we too hastily form our conclusions ! Therefore it is with 
prudence, and matured judgment, that we should collect know¬ 
ledge. We may apply to science what was said of the earth,— 
she is exacting, but not ungrateful. You must work hard if you 
wish to accumulate a rich harvest. 
I n conclusion, permit us to hope that when you leave us in order 
to take your proper rank in society, we shall not be entirely sepa¬ 
rated from each other. Your preceptors will feel a deep interest 
in your future welfare. We shall love to trace you in the first 
steps of your honourable career—to counsel and to guide you, if 
there should be occasion for it, and to cherish those relations 
with you that will be useful to science. Your future prosperity 
or your ill-success will depend entirely on yourselves. With re¬ 
gard to most of you, the useful and unpretending profession 
which you are about to embrace will not have sufficient of 
science about it to entitle you to any great distinction. Inde¬ 
pendent of those principles which ought to direct every good 
man, your manners should be mild and simple, and modest as 
the theatre in which your studies have been pursued ; and to 
these should be added habits of order, economy, and disinterest¬ 
edness. 
