4 
EDITORIAL. 
has come to our notice, and we trust the last of its kind that 
is to appear, though the installment ends with the note, “To 
be continued.” Near the beginning of this article occurs this 
paragraph: 
“ Were I not unfitted by nature for human practice I should be a physician, 
the city associations of the veterinarian being such that I cannot see how any edu¬ 
cated and self-respecting man can assimilate with them. The veterinarian in cities 
is in the hands of grooms and horse dealers and forced to be more or less compan¬ 
ionable with a class of men the less he has to do with the better. For this 
reason I advise students to take even smaller practices in country districts wher¬ 
ever they can find such promising a fair living.” 
Either Dr. Billings does not know what he is writing 
about or else his experience has been such as he has depicted 
in the above extract, and he speaks of the status of the city 
veterinarian and his environments from personal contact. 
We are quite sure that the general remarks which he in¬ 
dulges in do not truthfully portray the typical city practi¬ 
tioner, who has the opportunity and, as a rule, lives in an 
atmosphere of respectable dignity, the picture which he has 
drawn being quite the exception, and applicable only to such 
men as would fall under such influences whether in the me¬ 
tropolitan or rural districts. The college-bred American vet¬ 
erinarian of to-day is a gentleman in character and education, 
and the calumny of Dr. Billings is in poor taste, especially 
when the remainder of his article is read, consisting, as it 
does, of an egotistical eulogy of himself, and writing for a 
journal widely circulated among the veterinarians’ best pa¬ 
trons, whose good opinions of the profession as a whole are 
much to be desired; and, therefore, the strictures referred to 
could hardly have been expected from a member of the pro¬ 
fession. 
New York Legislation.— Dr. Arthur O’Shea, chair¬ 
man of the Legislative Committee of the New York County, 
and member of the same committee of the State Society, has 
addressed a letter to the local veterinarians, urging them to 
write personal letters to Senator Malby, Chairman of the 
Codes Committee, insisting upon arousing the Jury Bill from 
the slumbering condition into which it relapsed after reach¬ 
ing his committee. Every metropolitan veterinarian should 
