217 
EDINBURGH VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSO- 
CIATION. 
At a meeting of this association, held February 10th, 1869, Mr. 
Gerrard, student, in alluding to the death of Prof. Strangeways, 
said— 
Mr. President and Gentlemen, since we were last assembled 
in this place, changeful Death has snatched from earth a generous, 
noble-minded, and a large-hearted soul, whose energies were looked 
upon as far from being spent, and whose peculiar powers and 
culture, added to his generous, manly nature, had given a singular 
interest to, and cast a bright halo around, his Alma Mater, the 
loss of which, I am afraid, will not soon, if ever, be replaced. 
It becomes us, therefore, his sorrowing students, on this our first 
occasion of meeting together as members of this association, of 
which he was so distinguished a President, and to the chair of which 
he was always so cordially welcomed, to record the deep sense of 
the loss sustained by his untimely and premature removal from us, 
as well as to convey to his bereaved partner and sorrowing relatives 
our manifesto of the esteem and respect in which he was held by 
us as our teacher, our trusted, tried, and acknowledged friend. 
It is with no “fantastic sorrow” that such a loss must be 
mourned, the heart must thrill with pain when such a bereavement 
compels us to utter the solemn requiem of sorrow, for the sudden 
abstraction of a tried and valued teacher and friend. 
Gentlemen, I am bold to say that, in the person of the late Prof, 
Strangeways, all these things met and harmonised ; and who is there 
amongst us, or who that has ever listened to his teaching and 
enjoyed his friendship, that did not find in him one or all of them ? 
and I think it may be safely affirmed that he left this earth without 
an enemy. 
He had about him the essential elements of greatness, a quality 
at no time so superfluously plentiful in this world as to be easily 
mistaken ; its characteristics are too well marked, and too con¬ 
spicuously evident, to be erroneously attributed with such singular 
unanimity and enthusiasm to any one who had not, in an undeniable 
manner, gained his position in the very face of deprecation. We 
do not mean that greatness which is measured merely by the object 
accomplished without regard to the manner of its accomplishment. 
“ Greatness,” says the talented Arthur Helps, “ is not in the 
circumstances, but in the man,” and it possesses these as its prime 
and all-important qualities, “ openness of nature to admit the light 
of reason and courage to pursue it.” 
The honest performance of duty is the noblest heroism, the truest 
manliness. In the mighty strife of time we have each to bear our 
