SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
4iS 
being the same, the result will be a male offspring. Prof. Thiery 
found that when the ovum was immature, as in the first of heat, 
the produce would be a female; but where copulation occurred 
afterwards it would be a male, because the ovum "was more fully 
ripened or matured. In looking over a recent certified report of 
the Agricultural Society of Canton de Yaud, Switzerland, we 
find results of a careful testing of this discovery. In all twenty- 
nine experiments of the new method were made, and in every 
one they succeeded in the production of what was wanted, male 
or female, there not being a single failure. The report further 
says, ‘ we have visited a number of stock-farms in France, Eng¬ 
land and Germany, and experiments have been conducted which 
prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is much that can 
be depended upon in Prof. Thiery’s law.’ 
“ To digress and in conclusion, I believe the true practice of 
veterinary science is yet in its infancy in this country, and that 
those of us who have availed ourselves of the many advantages 
afforded by this Institute have chosen wisely a profession in which 
the harvest is plenty and the laborers are but few. The best 
estimate of animal losses from preventible or curable diseases is 
placed at from two to seven per cent.—from forty to two hundred 
and forty million dollars a year. The loss in the State of New 
York alone from epizootic abortion in cows has reached as high as 
ten millions of dollars a year. The vast monetary interests then that 
will be intrusted to our care, to say nothing of the sympathy and 
charity we all entertain for every form of suffering, will more 
than ever call for veterinarians of the highest education and the 
best attainments. The amount of knowledge necessary is only 
to be attained by years of study, experience and close observation. 
Every step that is made toward acquiring this information will 
render the practitioner so much the more efficient in the discharge 
of the duties of his profession, and I have a faith and pride in 
the intelligence and ability of my associates of the junior as well 
as the senior class, that I think will bear me out in the assertion 
that a class of men are entering the profession who will drive 
out the empirics and pretenders who have so long imposed upon 
the public because of the lack of better men.” 
