COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT. 
75 
ments in the opposition of quackery. You will have the “prac¬ 
tical man ” and his friends to sneer at your thermometer and 
other scientific aids to diagnosis, but you must not be discouraged 
by these. Could you look back with me to the position, the ob¬ 
scure position, of this profession in America twenty years ago, 
you would be encouraged by the hope that if the progress for the 
next twenty years was at all equal to the past, the profession will 
occupy its true position. For your encouragement I will say that 
I honestly believe that no other profession holds out equal pros¬ 
pects for active young men on this continent. Europe, because 
the services of veterinary science were neglected, and the warning 
voices of the profession were unheeded, to-day, from end to end 
of the continent, is a hotbed of contagious diseases. Britain 
turned a deaf ear to the warnings of the veterinary profession, 
and her aoricultural ruin from cattle disease followed. The 
o 
United States heeded not the warning, and a large extent of her 
seaboard States are blighted by disease, not only causing serious 
losses direct in the infected places, but crippling her export cattle 
trade by foreign embargoes, lessening its value by millions of dol¬ 
lars annually, but of infinitely greater importance, endangering 
her millions of cattle in the great plains of the West. Could 
United States legislators realize what that really means, the loss 
of hundreds of millions of dollars; not only that, but that it is a 
menace to the meat supply of the whole world, they would no 
longer trifle with the necessary legislation. You will see that the 
United States Government and people must and will awaken to 
the importance of the profession, and must and will place the 
great question in the hands of this profession. Canada, happily, 
has so far escaped the plague, and must and will on that account 
become the meat producer for nearly the whole world ; and now 
that companies are being formed for the wholesale production of 
beef in our great Northwest, now that the value of our cattle 
trade is being comprehended in a measure, I think that Canada 
is not likely to lessen her interest in or even allow a profession 
which has been and must continue to be of such incalculable value 
to occupy any but an important position. You will thus see, 
gentlemen, that in the very nature of things your profession can- 
