OPENING OF SESSION AT ROYAL VETERINARY COLLEGE. 749 
kept, and that the names of the individuals who were 
kind enough to present any valuable specimen should be 
recorded, so that there might be an evidence of the intelli¬ 
gence and integrity of those gentlemen who had so laboured 
for the advantage of his College. (Applause.) Professor 
Tuson mentioned the desirability of your having a Discussion 
Society. In all the medical schools of London, or certainly 
in the greater portion of them, there is a Junior Discussion 
Class. I cannot conceive anything which is more likely to 
bring out your knowledge or to impress upon you important 
facts than discussing the several subjects appertaining to 
other matters as well as to the science and art of surgery 
amongst yourselves. It gives you a faculty of speaking, 
it gives you a knowledge of grasping facts, it enables you to 
listen to discussions and to discuss the views of vour fellow- 
* 
students, and at the same time it is a very profitable as well 
as a very social means of communicating knowledge from 
one to another. I am sure the governors would concede 
that the library or class room should be open to you on 
certain evenings, as may be agreed upon, for such discussions 
to take place. I have seen the greatest possible advantage 
result from such institutions, enabling men to enter the 
several scientific societies afterwards, and discuss subjects 
with those who are more familiar with them by age and 
by research than they could be themselves, and thus they 
have an opportunity of gaining knowledge which probably 
they would not be enabled to gain in any other way. 
The “ cheap practice” which is now attached to this College 
I cannot but conceive must be of very great advantage. 
You have an opportunity of thus seeing a larger number 
of cases and of making yourselves more practically familiar 
with disease and surgical operations than you could have by 
the cases that are admitted into the hospital of the College. 
The fact also of your being enabled to go down and to ex¬ 
amine animals as they come from abroad, and so to become 
familar with diseases which we endeavour by legislative 
enactments to keep out of the country, is a very great boon 
which has been conferred only lately upon this College. 
My friend, Mr. Tuson, has alluded to those who have, un¬ 
fortunately, been removed from among us by death; and he 
has also drawn attention to those who have seceded from 
the College from other circumstances. We were sorry to 
lose the services of Professor Pritchard. He was a man 
for whom I entertained personally great respect. I had 
the greatest opinion of his intelligence as a veterinary 
surgeon, and there can be little doubt that the College 
