WEST OF SCOTLAND VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 117 
occurred ; and by the interchange of opinions and ideas, we 
obtain more confidence in our future practice, and are better 
fitted for the discharge of our professional duties; they also 
create a bond of union amongst us that will act for the general 
good of our profession, and induce a friendly feeling, the one 
towards the other, that should ever subsist, and which is so 
desirable. This I put much stress on. The foundation 
stone has been laid of what 1 may call a great building, 
which I hope will continue to progress and never be finished ; 
and I have no doubt we shall receive the commendations of 
generations yet to come, for having deposited the nucleus of 
what 1 expect will yet be a great and invaluable institution. 
“Thanking you, gentlemen, for your attention to these 
few remarks on such an important subject, 1 beg to give for 
your acceptance, e Prosperity to the West of Scotland Veteri¬ 
nary Medical Association, may it advance and live for 
ever. 5 55 
Mr. Moir replied to the toast of the “Army and Navy 55 in 
very appropriate terms, touching upon the stirring times we 
now live in, and proposed, in a very able manner, “ Pros¬ 
perity to the Veterinary Institutions. 5 ’ 
Mr. McCall returned thanks, and said : “ In responding to 
the toast with which you have coupled my name, I feel a 
pride and satisfaction which I am unable adequately to ex¬ 
press. 
“It might naturally be expected that, having so lately 
filled a chair in one of those institutions, 1 should be pre¬ 
pared satisfactorily to represent them; but unless I was 
individually to characterise them, I fear that partiality, and 
that too with justice, might be laid to my charge. Moreover 
it is not necessary, and w ould be foreign to the toast, which 
is solely ‘ Prosperity to the Veterinary Institutions. 5 
“Mr. Moir has somewhat anticipated me in his remarks, 
but with the sum and substance thereof I for one entirely 
concur. Science, in all its phases (if I may be allowed the 
expression), is fast progressing; and I think if we look 
around us, and call to recollection that little more than half 
a century ago, the institutions whose cause I here represent 
could almost be said not to have existed—I say that, under 
these circumstances, I think w^e have every reason to con¬ 
gratulate ourselves upon the advancement we, too, have made 
in veterinary science. 
“ It is true, theory is at all times the monster creature of 
our own imaginations, and the theory of to-day is often justly 
the folly of to-morrow ; notwithstanding all this, who can 
read the articles which occasionally emanate from the pens 
