242 
EDITORIAL. 
one of the acknowledged and established institutions of the 
land, and hundreds of intelligent and ambitious young men 
are choosing a career in the ranks of a scientific fraternity, and 
the pursuit of a calling which within the term of a generation 
would have brought them no nobler designation than that of 
“ horse doctor” or, as a somewhat genteeler cognomen, 
“ farrier.” 
Yet some of our existing schools may already claim a com¬ 
paratively extended existence, and in fact can number among 
their teachers men who have grown old in their honorable work. 
It has been with them a labor of professional love, and it must 
be with a feeling of profound satisfaction that they are now 
able to contemplate the fruits of their efforts as they have be¬ 
come manifest at the present time. 
But there is something which cannot be overlooked—a 
consideration of the first importance, which it would be an 
almost fatal error to ignore, and which should receive to-day 
the practical attention to which it is entitled, and which it 
will finally command. It is involved in the important ques¬ 
tion whether existing schools have enlarged their teaching 
facilities and means proportionately to the advancing develop¬ 
ment of the science? There has been an annual increase in 
their number—more are coming into being and others will 
from time to time spring up and parade their announcements 
and promises, but is this the only kind of increase which the 
profession and the public, and the true interests of science, 
have a right to expect ? Some among our thinking friends 
have fears in this direction, and have premonitions of danger 
and trouble ahead: they think that not merely more schools 
are needed, but more and better, as well as the improvement 
of the old. The veterinary education of twenty-five years 
ago will not meet the requirements of the veterinarian stu¬ 
dent of the present time. Amalgamated faculties are scarcely 
any longer justifiable. Veterinary , and strictly veterinary 
teachings are indispensable, and it must be the chief effort of 
veterinary schools to acquire the power of conferring, in the 
degree of veterinary surgeons, a certification that its holder is 
“every inch a (veterinarian) king,” and no usurping preten- 
