PRESIDENTS BANQUET IN BIRMINGHAM. 
805 
and increase the activity of rival schools to fit their pupils for the 
standard appointed by the constitutional representatives of the 
profession. When it is desired to improve a breed of animals, or 
an agricultural operation, exhibitions are organized, prizes offered, 
and judges appointed to award them. Reliance is placed on the 
spirit of rivalry, and on the ambition to excel, implanted in the 
human breast, and the result in practice amply supports the propo¬ 
sition, that if a reward or distinction be offered for an improved 
article, efforts will be made to produce it in direct proportion with 
the magnitude and importance of the prize offered. The work 
must necessarily be of slow development; but provided the exami¬ 
nations were so framed as to elicit knowledge of the right kind, I 
have no doubt that in a very few years the effect in the schools 
would be most perceptible. Much as it is to be desired that the 
more essentially scientific part of the educational course be better 
cultivated, great care must be taken not to neglect those useful, and 
mistakenly termed humbler branches, without which the stock of 
professional knowledge cannot be complete. By all means let a 
candidate for the diploma be versed—the more profoundly the 
better—in anatomy, physiology, and the allied sciences, but very 
good care must be taken that he is soundly informed on such great 
and fundamental subjects as lameness in horses, and the domestic 
management of cattle in health and disease. The laudable desire 
to raise the profession, and to be esteemed gentlemen, has, I fear, 
misled some well-intentioned but narrow-minded persons, who have 
taught young men that, by taking off their coats and soiling their 
hands, they would lower their dignity. Such men have mistaken 
their vocation. As a surgeon, I deem myself bound to do every¬ 
thing, for even the poorest of my hospital patients, that can contri¬ 
bute to the cure of disease or to the relief of pain. What more 
ennobling after aspiring to the comprehension of nature’s highest 
truths, than to practise the great teaching of nature in all her 
works—completeness in every detail—neglect of nothing, however 
seemingly trivial, that can contribute to the attainment of the end in 
view. It is this knowledge of detail and thoroughness in practice, 
as well as acquirement in learning, that it is to be hoped that the 
Boards of Examiners maybe instructed by our Council to test more and 
more fully, and to stimulate the cultivation of. Happily we may 
be quite confident that, in whatever measure the Boards of Ex¬ 
aminers of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for England 
and Scotland can help the progress of veterinary education, and of 
our corporate interests, they will never be found wanting, so long 
as they are composed of such distinguished men as those who now 
form part of them. Mr. President and gentlemen, I have much 
pleasure in proposing “The Boards of Examiners,” and to couple 
with it the name of my friend Mr. Lawson. 
Mr. Lawson , on rising, said—I regret that you have not coupled 
the name of my friend on my right, Mr. Cartledge, with the health 
of the Court of Examiners, as I am sure he would have been able 
to respond to it much more efficiently than myself. This is more 
