NORTH OF ENGLAND VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 121 
periodicals, much less to study the subjects upon which the 
authors mentioned had written ? I apprehend that such a man 
as I have just sketched—and there is many a one to be found 
amongst the veterinary surgeon’s best customers—would not 
be long in forming his opinion as to how far such persons were 
entitled to rank with the educated and scientific of other 
professions. 
There is nothing more obnoxious to a well-educated, com¬ 
mon-sensed Englishman than a counterfeit, and there is no 
greater counterfeit than the veterinarian who imagines that, 
because he has spent two sessions at one of our colleges and 
taken his diploma, he needs no more study—that lie has 
learned all that is necessary. Be it remembered that when 
V 
we leave our alma mater , even the best amongst us have 
only laid a solid foundation upon which to raise a useful 
superstructure, whose adornments should be microscopical 
investigations, agricultural chemistry, chemical analysis, 
botany, geology, meteorology, &c. &c., for without a general- 
knowledge of such things we must be content to be placed 
out of the pale of scientific men. 
Another important subject for associations such as we 
have this day commenced should be to investigate the laws 
of breeding in all our domesticated animals, especially the 
horse and ox. No one has the ear of the breeder of animals 
so much as the veterinary surgeon, and, as a rule, his advice 
is asked and acted upon where he holds the position he ought 
amongst his employers, for no one has the same opportunity 
of observation as the veterinarian. On such a subject as this 
he ought ever to be noting down useful facts, reasoning upon 
them, and deducing therefrom lessons of importance to the 
agriculturist, and through him to the whole nation. 
I know that in the south-east.part of Durham, a few years 
ago, nineteen-twentieths of the breeders of horses w r ere 
carrying out the most absurd system imaginable. The fol¬ 
lowing question has been frequently put to me—“ Do you 
know any one who has an old mare done work, that I could 
buy cheap to breed a foal from ? ” Or another inquirer, who 
has a wretchedly ill-shapen, worn out mare, eighteen to twenty 
years of age, affected with spavins, side-bones, thin walls, 
and fiat feet, besides being long-coupled and narrow-chested, 
will ask, what horse he had better put the old mare to, 
for she is worth nothing more than to breed a foal from ? ” 
If you tell such a man that the most economical plan is to 
shoot the old mare, and if he wish to breed, to do so from 
his prime, strong, well-made young mare, he will at first 
shrug his shoulders and say he cannot afford it — <e the young 
