876 
GLASGOW VETERINARY COLLEGE. 
separate species. This adaptation appears to be brought about by the 
processes of development, as though the great Creator had utilized 
certain typical organs for every purpose comprised within the beneficent 
scheme of animal life. Thus, to take two of the most divergent instances 
—the horse and man—the stifle joint of the horse is the analogue of the 
human knee, the hock of the heel, the single toe on which the horse 
walks is the analogue of the central digit in the human hand or foot, the 
other digits being represented in the existing horse by the splint-bones, 
which in the earlier equine species carried hoofs, and in still earlier 
forms appear to have reached the typical number of five. These, and 
thousands of similar analogues, do not to my mind prove community of 
origin, but they prove unity of plan, and strongly point to this, that if 
ever the sciences of life and curative medicine are to be prosecuted in 
an exhaustive and effectual manner, it must be by comparative anatomy, 
comparative physiology, comparative science, in short, universally. 
Veterinary science has thus assumed vast importance, and has come 
into line with human medicine and surgery. Neither of those two 
sciences can hereafter stand apart. The veterinarian has much to learn 
from the medical man, and the medical man from the veterinarian. 
Indeed, the time cannot be far distant when for all the higher purposes 
the two provinces of medical science must coalesce. If I am at all right 
in the views I have been indicating, it follows that not only is the pro¬ 
fession to which you have devoted yourselves one of great importance, 
but important duties devolve upon you who are now its students, but 
will hereafter become each in his sphere its pioneers and advancers. 
Permit me, therefore, to give a few words of counsel which experience 
in a different line has impressed on my own mind. Every man should 
seek so to learn his profession that he may live by it. He who fails to 
do this may be said to fail in a primary and important duty. But if 
any man resolves to know only as much of his profession as shall enable 
him to maintain himself, his object in life is a very humble one, and the 
probability is that he will not even attain that object, humble though it 
may be. To succeed in any walk of life whatever requires it to be pro¬ 
secuted with enthusiasm. But this is specially the case where the calling- 
chosen is a profession—that is to say, not merely an art but a science. 
The veterinary profession has now definitely entered the circle of the 
sciences, and must therefore advance with increasing acceleration. He, 
therefore, who should cultivate it merely as an art, however well skilled 
he might be in the art when he left the College, would find in a few 
years that he was left high and dry by those who, perhaps, though with 
inferior abilities, had chosen to follow the scientific stream. Nor is there 
any excuse for the veterinary student who does not prosecute his science 
with enthusiasm. The mere lawyer, after he has laboriously cultivated 
his profession for years, may find much of his laboriously acquired 
learning swept away by a new Act of Parliament. The veterinarian 
deals with the eternal verities of nature. Whatever truths he can attain 
to remain truths for ever, and become new points of departure for still 
more important verities. Small as the contribution may be which he 
may make to his science, if only it be truth, it is so not relatively but 
absolutely. Again, let me advise you to cultivate a habit of reading in 
your leisure hours, so that it may become not a duty only, but a source 
of the highest enjoyment. In old times the veterinarian could advance 
only by personal observation, or the suggestions of such friends as were 
in his immediate neighbourhood. Now-a-days, the press brings the ex¬ 
perience and discoveries of the whole scientific world within the reach of 
those who avail themselves of its aid. A man may, therefore, learn more 
