858 ROYAL COLLEGE OF VETERINARY SURGEONS. 
to have the matter thoroughly investigated by a Select 
Committee. 
Mr. Wilkinson proposed that Professor Williams should he 
heard as far as he wished to speak on the subject, and the 
Council assenting to this course, 
Professor Williams said he felt that the word “ Edinburgh ” 
seemed to spoil the whole sense of the thing; but if they would 
accept it as he had explained it, he would speak upon the 
question. In answer to what Professor Brown said, that no 
staff of teachers should petition or dictate to the Royal College 
of Veterinary Surgeons, he replied that he stood there as a mem¬ 
ber of the Council, and made the motion in that capacity, and 
not as a professor at all. He represented the feelings of his 
College, but did not speak for the benefit of one individual 
veterinary school, but for the benefit of all future veterinary 
students. He did so first of all on the ground of expediency. 
As a matter of expediency they should follow the footsteps of 
the medical profession, who had found it necessary to examine 
their students at least upon two or three occasions. It was 
also a matter of justice to the students, to the professors, and 
to the public. When the rules and bye-laws of the Royal 
College of Veterinary Surgeons were first framed, the teaching 
at the schools was very different to what it was now. Formerly 
many of the schools had but one professor, and but two or 
three subjects were taught, and meagrely taught, compared 
with the teaching of to-day. The students were then 
examined by their own teachers. Now the student had 
to attend and learn five or six distinct subjects, and how 
could a young man be expected to attend five lectures per 
day and get up all those subjects thoroughly ? It was an im¬ 
possibility. The best of their students—those who worked 
hard—were, at the end of the session, almost incapable of 
working. To sit down to five lectures a day was more than 
any one should be called upon to do ; but the student was 
compelled to do it to meet the requirements of the examina¬ 
tion, and in many cases the knowledge so gained was ex¬ 
ceedingly superficial and was forgotten in a very short time. 
Then, on the score of justice to the teacher, it was most 
unfair for anybody to ask him to teach pathology and the prac¬ 
tice of medicine to a student totally unprepared to under¬ 
stand one single word of it. The man should be first allowed 
to study his anatomy, his chemistry, and materia medica, and 
then he would be fitted to go to the higher branches of pro¬ 
fessional study. But when a number of students who had 
never heard a lecture in their lives came to hear pathology and 
physiology, what could they understand of these subjects? The 
