INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
7 75 
priest. Masses were said in favour of the animals suffering 
from all manner of diseases, including epidemics and injuries 
from poison. When on the road to Carhaix my Breton 
coachman pulled up at a wayside chapel and dropped an 
offering into the strong box, in view of securing the favour 
of the patron saint of horses. Bundles of horse-hair in the 
form of tails lay scattered on the floor of the little building, 
testifying alike to the faith and simplicity of the peasantry. 
Here is a state of things at which you may cry cui bono 
as much as you please, but the uniformly kind and devout 
peasant proprietor is perfectly satisfied with this ancien 
regime, and for him all the modern scientific appliances 
and advances in the veterinary art remain of small moment. 
I make this remark in no reproachful tone, for I fancy that 
somewhat similar experiences are occasionally encountered 
in remote parts of the United Kingdom. 
To conclude ; whatever the opinions of individual teachers 
amongst us may be, I believe that we are all equally animated 
by a common desire to advance our pupils’interests, and beyond 
this I think it has been shown that there are a thousand 
and one little services which it is in our power to render to 
the profession, quite apart from the ordinary College work 
for which the staff is salaried. The small services of which 
I speak may appear trifling in themselves, but taken collec¬ 
tively their performance consumes a large amount of valuable 
time. As a science examiner, and for fifteen years a teacher in 
two of our metropolitan medical schools, to say nothing of my 
previous official connection with the Edinburgh University, 
where, as Curator of the Anatomical Museum, I gave lectures 
on comparative anatomy to large bodies of students, I am in a 
position altogether exceptional, and therefore, perhaps, well 
fitted to compare the work of this College with that done in the 
schools of my own profession. The professors in the medical 
schools have no governors to legislate for them, but that is by 
no means an unmixed good. Complete freedom and indepen¬ 
dence is liable to abuse. For example, I once refused a certifi¬ 
cate to a medical student because he had only attended one 
lecture on botany throughout the whole course. The victim 
of my conscientiousness thereupon appealed to the Dean of 
the Faculty. That official, without consulting me, accepted 
the pupil’s assurances and at once signed his certificate. 
Shortly afterwards my young friend passed the Apothecaries’ 
Hall, triumphantly snapping his fingers at my churlishness. 
That sort of thing will not do here, neither would it do at 
the French veterinary schools. At Alfort the discipline is ex¬ 
ceedingly strict. When I privately mentioned that rude inter- 
