878 
GLASGOW VETERINARY COLLEGE, 
students. The youth of this country, particularly of Scotland, have 
always been characterised by a desire for learning even under the greatest 
difficulties. Each one of you would, I doubt not, desire that this insti¬ 
tution should flourish. Now, one of the most effectual means to that end 
consists in the diligence with which you prosecute your studies. And 
remember, that in thus promoting the welfare of this College, you are 
really promoting your own. 
Professor Young thought the Principal and students were greatly to be 
congratulated on the choice of the person by whom the session was in¬ 
augurated, for seldom has an institution of the kind been opened by an 
address so valuable in itself, so useful, so well worthy of being borne in 
mind by those to whom it was addressed, and also by the entire pro¬ 
fession of which they desired to become members. The admirably 
succinct views afforded of the history of the profession made the address 
a historical document of some value, seeing that it showed what seemed 
' o # 
to be too much forgotten at the present day, namely, that the veterinary 
art had fallen from the high position it had once occupied by a mere 
accident, and had not been restored to its due position because of the 
unworthy jealousy and suspicion with which it had been regarded by 
members of the profession to which he himself belonged. It was to such 
institutions as the Glasgow Veterinary College they must look in the 
future for the restoration of both human medicine and veterinary me¬ 
dicine to their proper place—the restoration of the due proportions 
which were to exist between them; and he thought Sheriff Clark had 
foreshadowed very well what was the ardent desire of all who had the 
slightest interest in the progress of medicine in its most comprehensive 
sense when he suggested that human medicine and veterinary medicine 
should ere long form one indissoluble whole. (Applause). He himself 
had long looked forward to a combination of the two kinds of medicine 
as a necessity that must come if pathology was to be put on its proper 
footing. He asked them simply to bear in mind this important point, 
the necessity for the careful study of comparative pathology ; for those 
of them who happened to have read the discussions upon some of the 
legislation recently proposed before Parliament would doubtless have 
come to be aware of the fact that but for the labours of the veterinary 
surgeon they would still be in the dark as regards the character of some 
of the diseases which played such terrible havoc in the human race. 
(Applause). As regards the sound advice tendered by the Sheriff, he 
would say nothing, but he should like to make an addition to what the 
Sheriff had said in speaking of what might perhaps come before the 
students as the ruling ideas of their studies regarding the development 
of the horse and other domestic animals. They would doubtless hear a 
good deal about evolution, and Sheriff* Clark would pardon him if he 
reminded him that they were long past the days of natural selection ; 
that evolution, as it was called—a title claimed by one particular class 
of observers, he thought, somewhat unfairly, and to the prejudice of 
others who were equally entitled to claim it—had now added codicil 
after codicil to the right theory of natural selection, until they had a 
vast multiplicity of possible causes, each new explanation being needed 
to meet the case of some new difficulty. It was therefore superfluous in 
him to add anything regarding the danger of trusting to any one theory; 
but, if necessary to insist upon it, he should put it upon this ground— 
that there were so many additions needed, sometimes scarcely recon¬ 
cilable with each other, it was best for them to confine their labours in 
the meantime to actual observation, trusting to the future calmer thought, 
and wider experience, before any one particular doctrine of evolution 
