86 
D. McEACHRAN. 
school labored, as well as to the great credit due to Professor Smith for 
his perseverance and success in overcoming these difficulties. 
Every allowance must be made for the imperfections incidental to 
the establishment of a school to teach a new science in a new country. 
Nor do I think the same high standard of education was necessary in 
these days, short as the time seems. The rapid increase, not only in 
numbers but also in value of our agricultural stocks, consequent on the 
progressive development of the resources of the country, by the open¬ 
ing up of the Provinces by railway and steamboat communication, 
should naturally have led to a corresponding improvement in the curri¬ 
culum and requirements of the school, at which young men were taught 
how to manage these animals in health, and treat them when laboring 
under disease , but I am sorry to say we do not find such to have been 
the case. And while I would desire to give Professor Smith a very 
great deal of credit for what he has done for Veterinary Science in Can¬ 
ada, I would not be doing my duty to the profession were I not to give 
him also his just share of censure for refusing persistently to make re¬ 
forms in the curriculum of his school, which the advancement of the 
science has long ago demanded. 
In a lettei dated June, 1870, from a member of the profession, hold- 
ing the degrees of M. D. and M. R. C. V. S., then residing in Toronto, who 
examined the students weekly at Professor Smith’s request, during the 
session of 1868-9, I am informed that, though the students attended a 
few lectures on Physiology by an eminent teacher, they knew next to 
nothing of the subject; that they attended no lectures on Elementary 
Chemistry, and were equally ignorant of that important study ; and he 
fuither informs me, that Professor Smith, on being remonstrated with, 
declared, that a knowledge of Chemistry would be of no use to them in 
practice. In consequence, the gentleman referred to, declined to act as 
an examiner, or accept an invitation to the annual dinner, protesting 
against sending any one of the students of that year to the country as 
fit to practice yet we find that no less than seven received the diploma 
of the Toionto School that year. Since then, there have been some 
able young men entered this school—men who had been accustomed to 
read and study and men who, had they been afforded proper oppor¬ 
tunities, might have become pillars in the science. Some of them who, 
b> their own exertions, attained very creditable degrees of proficiency— 
and as remarked to me by one of the examiners who assisted at the last ex¬ 
amination in Toronto, made them (the examiners, mostly former students) 
blush for the low standard on which they themselves had been graduated. 
