INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
C-96 
position of the veterinary surgeon who is called upon to 
advise in checking the first signs of an epizootic, and with 
what careful thought and consideration, equally opposed to 
heedless impetuosity or to indecision, he should enter upon 
the duties intrusted to him. 
But I think I hear some of you say, What have we to 
do with this ? We have not come here to be taught the duties 
and functions of a veterinary philanthropist or transcen- 
dentalist; our object is to learn veterinary science, so that 
we may obtain an honorable and honest subsistence by its 
practice. We seek nothing higher. Now, it is because 
you have come here for this purpose, and because I and my 
fellow-professors are here for the sole object of aiding you in 
the best and most effective manner to achieve the purpose, 
that I have directed your attention to the widest scope 
and most dignified aspect of the veterinary practitioner’s 
duties. The readiest and surest mode of obtaining success 
in the practice of any art is by excellence in that art. This 
—and the proposition, 1 imagine, cannot require argument to 
support it—is not to be attained by aiming at the least, 
but at the highest requirements of the art. Excellence is 
reached in proportion as the latter are neared, and it is 
the strife after them which gives vitality to preliminary 
studies and the subsequent practical application of them. In 
proportion as you apprehend the higher and more noble 
functions of your art, so in proportion you will ennoble your 
profession and yourselves, and obtain the confidence of your 
brother-students or practitioners and the public. 
How, then, is this excellence to be secured? As of every 
other science, so of veterinary science, there is no royal road 
of approach. The road is a strait and narrow one, but it 
has been royally travelled. In this is your hope and en¬ 
couragement. If you attempt to do other than enter by the 
unpretending portal and over the rugged and seemingly 
repulsive path of honest and straightforward endeavour, you 
will be liable to suffer the fate of the three unhappy in¬ 
dividuals, two coming from the land of Vain-glory and one 
from the country of Conceit, who, as Bunyan tells us in his 
great vision, were met by Christian in the iC narrow way.” 
“ Why came ye not in at the gate which standeth at the 
beginning of the way ?” he said to the two former individuals, 
and they replied, “ That to go to the gate for entrance w 7 as by 
all their countrymen counted too far about, and therefore 
their usual way was to make a short cut of it, and to climb 
over the wall, as thev had done.” The latter individual— 
“ his name w T as Ignorance”—being asked a similar question, 
