REPORT or ANNUAL MEETING. 
365 
clown unqualified persons who had to supply their places, 
they ought not to complain of farriers pursuing their occu¬ 
pation, but to set to work to send a better class of men into 
the country. 
Frofessor Gamgee said that many years ago he contradicted 
the statement that the profession was over-stocked, and 
showed by statistics that instead of there being, as in some 
countries, one veterinary surgeon to thirty-five square miles 
of surface, there was in England only one to 250 square 
' miles, notwithstanding the larger proportion and value of 
stock in relation to area. The want had evidently been 
felt; and accordingly it would be noticed that the college 
had had annually more students to educate, and more 
members to qualify, so that to a certain extent a remedy 
was being gradually created. There was one remark he 
wished to make upon the distribution of veterinary surgeons 
over the country. It was a fact too painfully known to 
many of the members, that within the last fifteen years con¬ 
tagious epizootics had raged throughout the United Kingdom, 
with which the veterinary surgeon could not cope by ordi¬ 
nary remedial measures. Instead of the veterinary surgeon 
working hand in hand with the farmer to increase the meat 
supplies in the kingdom, and to enhance the value and 
position of the stock, the diseased meat butcher was called 
in ; and where the veterinary should be employed to stop 
disease, animal after animal was sent into the market, so 
tiiat it was found that not less than one fifth of the total 
amount of live stock consumed in the country was diseased. 
It had been his duty to draw attention to the matter in 
other places, and he was happy to say that the feeling was 
strengthened that, with the prevalence of contagious diseases, 
it was impossible to have an increase in the amount of stock 
throughout the kingdom. They ought all to act as one man 
for the prevention' of these epizootics. Twenty-five years 
ago, when they were unknown, every one was speaking of 
the practical value of veterinary surgeons. The late Mr. 
Youatt worked very hard to get a professor of cattle patho¬ 
logy appointed at the college, and at last succeeded; but, 
unfortunately, the epizootics had, to a great extent, neu¬ 
tralized the advantages of educating veterinary surgeons, 
and there was no doubt that killing diseased animals out of 
a farm had become far too much the practice instead of 
curing the disease; so much so that veterinary surgeons often 
felt themselves bound on going into a farm to say,You 
had better slaughter that animal; I can do nothing for you.^^ 
He thought that something should be done to put a stop 
