ARMY APPOINTMENTS IN THE INDIAN SERVICE. 
315 
rank of the Veterinary Surgeons of our Army, and to in¬ 
crease the pay, and half-pay of the Officers of that Service, 
our will and pleasure is that from and after the date of 
this our Royal Warrant, the following rules shall be estab¬ 
lished for the admission, promotion, and retirement, and for 
the pay, half-pay, relative rank and allowances, of the Veteri¬ 
nary Surgeons of our Army, and that by these rules our 
Commander-in-Chief shall be governed in recommending 
officers for admission, promotion and retirement.^^ 
' See now what our Governor-General in Council says in 
paragraph 2nd of his order in Fort William Gazette of 3rd 
of April, I860: 
It has not [the italics are my own] been considered ex¬ 
pedient at present to alter the existing regulations affecting 
the pay and allowances, or the condition of invaliding and 
retirement, of this class of officers.’^ 
Why and how can Sir Charles Wood or the Governor- 
General modify a Royal Warrant, or consider it not” ex¬ 
pedient, when the Royal Warrant distinctly says in its first 
paragraph that it is expedient”^. Are Royal Warrants 
waste-paper only, or, like Turkish manifestoes, meant merely 
to appease temporary discontent ? 
Shortly before the Warrant appeared I had intended me¬ 
morialising the Home Government on the injustice of keeping 
veterinary surgeons as cornets for ten years, but when this 
balm of Gilead,^^ in the shape of a Royal Warrant, was 
published, I threw down my pen, and my sad heart rejoiced, 
as did those of my professional brethren. We trusted, how¬ 
ever, to a broken reed, and here I am, still a cornet, having 
been so for nearly seven years, and must be so for upwards 
of three more. At the end of that time (if not before) I 
must go home to recruit my health. I must pay my pas¬ 
sage, as also that of my wife and children; the children must 
be educated (not as veterinary surgeons—no, God forbid !). 
I must pay my passage out again, and all this on the savings 
from a corneds pay. 
The thing is absurd; and the end must be, either increased 
pay or no veterinary surgeons; and those now in will hail 
the day when they can go and “shake the dust from their 
feet.^^ 
It may be asked. If you are dissatisfied, why do you stay? 
I answer, an army veterinary surgeon makes but a poor 
country practitioner, especially an Indian one. Moreover, 
one does not like to have to begin the world again after 
spending the best years of his life in a country like this; nor 
does he relish the idea of being called up by farmer Giles at 
