SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
565 
grasped its scope and magnitude during even the last ten years. 
We have been so engrossed with the struggle to keep in touch 
with modern opinions and practice that we have had little time 
for retrospective contemplation. 
We are also referred to as a young profession, which, when 
applied to the profession in America, is especially true. Even 
so young a man as your President has, during his short life in 
the profession, seen every existing veterinary college in the 
United States, with perhaps one exception, organized and devel¬ 
oped to their present high state of efficiency. Our great National 
veterinary department, the Bureau of Animal Industry, which 
has solved more difficult problems and done more for the live 
stock interests of this country than was ever done by any other 
similar institution in any country, came into existence about 
the time the speaker entered the profession. Whatever the vet¬ 
erinary profession in America is to-day has been the work of 
the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Not only is the pro¬ 
fession, with its powerful and far-reaching influences for the 
good of the public health and wealth, a stalwart youth, but it 
is also largely the product of the efforts of youthful men. I 
look before me in vain to find more than an occasional head 
sprinkled with gray to denote long years of service in the 
cause. Perhaps no similar scientific association ever convened 
in such large numbers with so young and vigorous a personnel. 
It is not my purpose to in any sense attempt a description 
of the matchless progress of the veterinary profession during 
the closing years of the last century. Such a task would be 
much more pleasant than the one I have essayed, but I see a 
duty in another direction. Permit me to say, however, that this 
progress has not always been direct and conservative, but some¬ 
times, at least, rather meteoric and brilliantly erratic. Vigor¬ 
ous young manhood has its follies as well as its virility, and not 
in all cases has the progress of the profession been consistent 
and symmetrical. However, I am in no sense a pessimist. In¬ 
deed, in so far as the future of this association and the veteri¬ 
nary profession is concerned, I am optimistic to a degree, but it 
has seemed to me proper to point out certain phases of work 
that have been neglected and modestly criticise where, in my 
judgment, faults exist that may be corrected. Perhaps in no 
field of veterinary effort in America have better results been 
obtained than in veterinary college education. The three-year 
schools of to-day, with their longer periods for instruction and 
their laboratories and clinics, graduate men far superior to those 
