OPENING OF SESSION AT ROYAL VETERINARY COLLEGE. 745 
As students you must learn to regard each branch of 
study as being of equal importance, and consequently 
endeavour to master one subject as completely as another. 
You will not, if you are wise, neglect any particular branch 
because it is difficult, or because, in your opinion, it has no 
practical bearing on your professional pursuit. 
Never forget that the curriculum has been carefully 
thought out and compiled by far older and more experienced 
heads than yours, and that, therefore, it is better for you to 
accept it as the best for enabling you to obtain your di¬ 
plomas, and subsequently occupying a satisfactory position 
in the profession to which you desire to belong. 
A propos of the acquisition of knowledge which has no 
apparently direct or practical connection with your particular 
calling, and the desirability of its non-neglect, let me quote 
from a speech recently delivered by Mr. Fawcett, M.P., 
Post Master General, at the distribution of prizes to the 
successful candidates of the Oxford and Cambridge local 
examinations. Mr. Fawcett truly says “ that he could con¬ 
ceive there could be no greater error than to measure the 
advantage of learning any particular subject merely by the 
practical use it would be in after life. He hoped they (‘ his 
audience ’) would not think he was egotistical in referring 
to his own experience, but during his school and college 
days he spent a great portion of his time in learning mathe¬ 
matics. From circumstances to which he need not particu¬ 
larly refer, no one had had less occasion to use mathematics 
than he had, but yet if he could live his life over again, 
with his present experience, knowing exactly what he 
would have to experience in after life, he certainly—so 
great was the advantage he attributed to mathematical 
training—would not spend one single hour less in the study 
of that subject than he did in days gone by.” 
If, during your collegiate experience, you ever feel in¬ 
clined to regard as useless some of the more abstract scien¬ 
tific questions that your teachers will bring before you, do 
not regard them with indifference, but recall to your minds 
the opinions of Mr. Fawcett in regard to mathematics, and 
believe that a time will probably come when you too will 
look back with satisfaction to the general as well as to the 
special training which you were required to undergo in 
early life. 
By way of further encouraging those whose ardour may 
be damped by a consideration of the number of subjects 
they will be necessitated to study, I would say, that hun¬ 
dreds have, by application and by a fair amount of hard 
