INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
819 
lias been done and wliat it is contemplated to do, you may be 
encouraged to make an effort to work up for any little defi¬ 
ciencies wbicb your inward feelings may excuse you of. I 
am bold, it may be termed rude, enough to think that there are 
among you some who are inclined to congratulate yourselves 
that you are students at the college before the more severe 
matriculation examination has been instituted. I hope not; 
but if this be so, I Avould say to such, depend upon it this 
should be a source of regret to you rather than a cause for 
congratulation; rest assured that stern necessity for a more 
highly educated class of pupils alone gave rise to this move¬ 
ment ; and I would strongly counsel all of you who conscien¬ 
tiously feel that your present condition is scarcely sufficient, 
to lose no opportunity that may offer to make up for the de¬ 
ficiency. “ Life is for the present and the future, and not for 
the past.” Recollect that you will be followed from the 
school by men who will be such grammarians and scribes as 
a gentleman expects to meet in a professional man ; and men 
Avho will sit down with you to canvass the favours of the 
public; and do not forget that you are living in times when 
a man’s letter is looked upon as a sample, as it were, of the 
man, times when a well-indited epistle predisposes a person 
in favour of the author; while, on the other hand, a badly 
composed and incorrectly penned letter, to a similar or greater 
extent, prejudices and disgraces the person from whom it 
emanates. 
I must now pass from this topic, and speak to you more 
particularly of ^the nature of your studies, and the faci¬ 
lities you will have for the careful prosecution of those 
studies. You are here, gentlemen, to be instructed in the 
art and science of veterinary surgery, to obtain a knowledge 
of which it is considered necessary for you to be inculcated 
in the principles of at least chemistry, materia medica, 
anatomy, physiology, surgery, and pathology. Chemistry, 
that you may know, not only the composition, nature, and 
qualities of the drugs used in the treatment of disease, but 
also that you may become acquainted with the change that 
the solids and fluids of the body are undergoing ; the manner 
in which the constituents of the food supply the necessary 
nutriment to the whole system, and the manner also in which 
the waste material is got rid of. Materia medica, that you 
may know the action of the different medicines employed, 
the proper way of compounding these agents, and the doses 
of them which may be judiciously administered. Anatomy, to 
teach you the structure and arrangement of the various parts of 
the domesticated animals. Physiology, that you may be 
