TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 491 
that the fourth and last petition had been added to the other 
documents, in order to prepare this law; but that other oc¬ 
cupations, and perhaps also the difficulty to regulate legally 
such a matter, have been the cause of the project being 
adjourned, although we have announced it all but officially. 
The petitions of the Department of the Seine Inferieure, 
and the Eure, of Charante, Calvados, Manche, and the Loire 
Inferieure, are identical as to the grounds on which they rest 
their claims, and are also similar to those which you have 
heard in the three preceding sessions. We will, therefore, 
content ourselves by a summary recapitulation of the obser¬ 
vations already made by the reporters of your Commissioners 
of Petitions. We will first bring to your memory that 
seventeen departments and also the Council-General of 
Agriculture, have long been clamorous for a law to protect 
the practitioners of veterinary medicine. Sometime ago 
also the departments of the West, where the greatest number 
of neat cattle are bred, demanded a fourth veterinary school 
to be established in a rural district for the special purpose of 
instructing the pupils in cattle practice. The three schools 
already in existence, being established in large towns, have 
the inconvenience of their practical instructions being prin¬ 
cipally confined to the horse. In these schools instruction is 
given gratis to 550 students, on an average. The course of 
study is during four years. After their examination they 
receive a diploma. A certain number of them find employ¬ 
ment in the army ; the rest establish themselves principally 
in the large towns, where they practise mainly hippiatric me¬ 
dicine, which offers them greater advantages. Very few of 
them go to reside in the rural districts, where their new 
calling, particularly at starting, would not be very lucrative, 
and where, on the other hand, they would have to contend 
against empirics who have been in practice for many 
vears. 
y 
These assertions are justified by the official documents 
which have already been put before you. They have not 
changed since the annexation of Savoy and Nice. There 
were in 1858, 2544 civil veterinary surgeons thus distributed 
—in the 86 chief towns of the departments, 319 ; in the 363 
chief towns of the arrondisements, 451 ; in the 796 chief 
towns of the cantons, 1012; and in other localities, 762; 
total, 2544. 
Thus, 2846 cantons of the eighty-six departments—one 
half, nearly—are unprovided with veterinary surgeons in the 
interest of agriculture. This is to be very much regretted, 
since every time an epizootic breaks out it is necessary to 
