EDITORIAL. 
245 
The United States Veterinary Medical Association is 
specially called upon-, and the remarks of the author touching 
the course of the committee appointed by the association, 
meet with our full endorsement; although the chairman of 
that committee may still not be altogether the culpable party. 
He is not precisely neglectful of his official duties, nor is he 
wanting in professional interest, but we know that he is bur¬ 
dened with numerous occupations, involving many onerous 
duties. And it may be further urged in his behalf, that he 
has made repeated requests to be relieved from his position 
as a member of that committee, for the very reason of his in¬ 
ability to give his attention more seriously to the work, and to 
perform the journeys and solicitations which are involved in 
its action. 
The veterinarians of the United States should set to work 
immediately and concertedly. The paper which we publish 
suggests among many other points, the arguments that the 
government is already informed of our needs; officers in the 
army and officers in the War Department are prepared to 
listen to our pleadings with a favorable disposition, and there 
is a better promise of success than has hitherto existed, in an 
effort to remove an evil which never should have been per¬ 
mitted to take root. 
Dr. E. F. Thayer.— The news of the decease of Dr. E. F. 
Thayer of Newton, Mass., reached us, last month, as we were 
mailing our August issue, and too late for us to give the sad 
information to our readers, and at too short notice to permit 
us to honor our old friend with our last duties. Dr. Thayer 
expired on the 29th of July, after an illness of three weeks, 
at the age of 78. He had been engaged in the practice of 
veterinary medicine for many years, but. was compelled to 
abandon the field a few years ago, leaving in the record of 
his professional life a name which will forever do honor to the 
cause of veterinary sanitary science, and furnish evidence of 
the value of the public services which it is in the power of an 
accomplished veterinarian to render. He was the first and 
the only veterinarian who knew how to recognize the presence 
of contagious pleuro-pneumonia in Massachusetts,and it is to 
