SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 9 
cular of 1st October, to invite all societies of veterinarians to 
examine this resolution, and already many associations have 
answered this appeal. 
“ A bulletin of the meetings of veterinary societies is, 
indeed, the best means of supporting the interests of the 
professional body ; it will have the great advantage of always 
keeping the members of the profession au courant with the 
efforts which our friends are everywhere making for the ad¬ 
vancement of the profession. Such a summary, which I will 
endeavour to make as faithful as possible, will place in per¬ 
manent relation with each other the veterinarians of all parts 
of France, and will be a step towards that general associa¬ 
tion which now is only a project, and shortly will be a 
reality.” 
At the sitting of 14th November, before the Central 
Society of Veterinary Medicine, an interesting passage of 
arms occurred between MM. Bouley and Sanso?i on a com¬ 
munication which at the previous meeting had been made by 
M. H. Benjamin, on a horse with special development of one 
of the digits which are under ordinary conditions rudi¬ 
mentary. M. Bouley commenced by stating that the case 
was one from which important general scientific deductions 
might be drawn. The animal was wild, and the case might 
be considered one of atavism. The animal in question re¬ 
sembles the hipparion ; its wild condition would have favoured 
its recurrence to original type, to those characters presented 
by the horse of that Tertiary epoch whose fauna and flora have 
disappeared leaving those of the quaternary period which 
we see in the present day. He would refer M. Benjamin to 
M. Gaudry’s interesting writings on equine palaeontology. 
M. Sanson would not join M. Bouley in recommending a line 
of observation into which it would not be prudent to enter. 
The case cited presents none of the characters of atavism. 
It is simply a fresh case of polydactylism, to be added to 
those which science already possesses, and which are repre¬ 
sented in most of the museums of Europe. The horse de¬ 
scribed is as like the horse as it is to the hipparion. He has seen 
at Utrecht an ox with its right hind limb divided as far as 
the hock. M. Bouley was not yet convinced ; but M. Sa?ison 
was on a special subject of his. There are human families 
characterised by being six-fingered, and this has never been 
considered as an illustration of atavism. We never find cases 
of fossil two-fingered horses; we only know the hipparion 
with three fingers. Science has to do with the positive in¬ 
terpretation of facts, and not with logic. “ I will never 
encourage a young worker to deviate from the line ofobserva- 
