o the stock.
He is not often mistaken in his diagnosis, though his patient cannot
detail his symptoms, or point to the position of the trouble. But the
vet is a man to be dispensed with as long as possible when epidemics,
like swine fever or foot and mouth disease, are raging in the
neighbourhood, because he may be a Government Inspector at such times,
and there is great danger to healthy stock if he has been officially
employed shortly before on an inspection. We had very little disease
at Aldington, being off the highroad, but we had one bad attack of
foot and mouth disease which I always thought was brought by a
veterinary surgeon. The complaint went all through my dairy cows and
fattening bullocks, and soon reduced them to lean beasts, but it was
surprising how quickly they picked up again in flesh and resumed their
normal appearance. It was curious to notice that, with the cows
standing side by side in the sheds, the disease would attack one and
miss the next two perhaps, then attack two and miss one, and so on;
doubtless it was a matter of predisposition on the part of those
affected.

The veterinary lecturer at Cirencester College told me that during the
cattle plague in the sixties he had a coat well worth L50 to any
veterinary surgeon, so impregnated was it with the infection. This man
was fond of scoring off the students, and had a habit at the
commencement of each lecture of holding a short _viva voce_
examination on the subject of the last. I remember when the tables
were turned upon him by a ready-witted student. The lecturer, who was
a superior veterinary surgeon, detailed a whole catalogue of
exaggerated symptoms exhibited by an imaginary horse, and selecting
his victim added, with a chuckle, "Now, Mr. K., perhaps you will
kindly tell us what treatment you would adopt under these
circumstances?" K. was not a very diligent student, and the lecturer
expected a display of ignorance, but his anticipated triumph was cut
short by the reply: "Well, if I had a horse as bad as all that _I_
should send for the vet." The lecturer expostulated, but could get
nothing further out of K., and was forced to recognize that the
general laugh which followed was against himself.

At a _post-mortem_, however, he was more successful in his choice of a
butt. A dead horse with organs exposed was the object before the
class, and the lecturer was asking questions as to their
identification. "Now, Mr. Jones, perhaps you will show