414 SOCIETY MEETING-S. 
abroad ; and while much more might be desired in certain 
quarters in the way of organization and consolidation, still we 
have every reason to congratulate ourselves that there never 
was a time when so many able practitioners were at work, or 
so many learned publications bearing upon the profession is¬ 
sued from the press in various languages as to-day. The 
great impetus given to every department of science by the 
investigating, analytical spirit of the age has fairly taken pos¬ 
session of our particular field, and it is our glory in this land 
and in this age to be the witness as well as adepts in a most 
useful science, which was regarded as venerable among the 
most remote people of whom we possess authentic history. 
The high antiquity of our profession, the supreme importance 
which it occupies in the physical economy of our modern so¬ 
ciety, its eminent respectability withall, at once constitute 
the guardians of the physical welfare of those dumb animals 
with which a beneficent providence has been pleased to sur¬ 
round man in order to his aid, comfort and enjoyment; and 
thus, in lending our intelligent efforts to the conservation of 
them, we are indirectly laboring in the highest interest of soci¬ 
ety itself. 
“ It is for these reasons that’it well becomes the Society to 
enlist in its behalf the best intelligence to be obtained, and 
insist upon a thorough scientific course in some recognized 
veterinary school preparatory to entering upon legitimate 
practice, and in this particular your committee feels itself 
constrained to reiterate with emphasis the various salutary 
recommendations of former committees on intelligence and 
education of this Society, and those especially which regard 
the duration and quality of the course of study to be pur 
sued, as well as the character of the student himself. For it 
cannot for a moment be doubted that the learning and char¬ 
acter of our practitioners will have, I may say, all to do with 
the shaping of the destiny and the attainments of the ulti¬ 
mate results of veterinary science. And it has for this rea¬ 
son, as well as on account of the close relationship existing 
between the methods of treating the various diseases of man 
and beasts, that the veterinarian should, in justice to his pro- 
