REPORT OP ANNUAL MEETING. 
421 
opportunity of being thoroughly tested in his knowledge of 
those sciences, and perhaps tested in a more complete manner 
than he is at the present day. He can then be left perfectly 
free during the after period to work at practical subjects, and 
then this College can efficiently test him upon these points. 
I think the time has arrived when the students in our schools 
can afford to pay the former fee of ten guineas for examination. 
It was reduced to seven. I believe our students would as 
willingly pay the ten as the seven. Then there could be no 
difficulty in having an examination at one period which should 
cost five guineas, and another examination at another period 
which should also cost five guineas. That arrangement, in¬ 
stead of interfering with the income of the College, would 
largely augment it. And it is essential, I think, in order to 
secure an increase in the number of our students, and in order 
to increase the prosperity of the College itself, that certain 
departments of study should be added, departments of study 
which are partially gone over, but which it is impossible, 
without some extension of the curriculum, to grasp. At the 
present moment, fortunately, the whole country is turning 
its attention to sanitary questions, in which the veterinary 
profession must play a most important part. The veterinary 
surgeon will be needed now where he was not needed before; 
the veterinary surgeon, indeed, will have to look at diseases 
in the lower animals from a totally different point of view—as 
a comparative pathologist. In this sense he will find occa¬ 
sions where he will be raised to the level of the members of 
the sister profession, where he can largely assist them and 
largely co-operate with them, and advise them in a very de¬ 
sirable manner. The section which must be added to the 
curriculum, and concerning which the Council must take 
some pains to consider whether it will not be desirable to add 
it to their Examining Board, is the section of Natural 
History. I hold that if we proceed for the next four or five 
years without very materially considering the desirability of 
testing the knowledge of the veterinary student on such sub¬ 
jects as zoology and botany, we shall fail in doing that which 
we owe to the country, and that which, indeed, we owe to 
the schools; because the schools will flourish in proportion 
as the students are accomplished veterinarians, and prove 
themselves useful throughout the kingdom. If you will 
allow me to go on, for we have only one opportunity in the 
course of the year of meeting and talking to each other, I 
will crave your indulgence for a few moments longer. I 
speak because I feel the great importance of these matters, 
and because I feel, as members of the same profession, that 
