‘> 
b TRICHINA SPIRALIS. 13 
mately fall a prey to some ravenous porker, there can be no doubt 
that it plays a most important part. And, as from the compara- 
tively small size of the rat, the animal is almost always entirely 
consumed by the pig that happens to catch it, it acts as a concen- 
trator as well as a gatherer. 
It is chiefly from this point of view that the omnivorous rat be- 
comes such a dangerous trichina gatherer, especially when associated 
with the equally omnivorous pig. 
That pigs catch, killand eat rats, has been denied, but only by 
those who are ignorant of the habits of the hog. 
One author says that he does not believe that pigs are sufficiently 
active to catch a rat*, but itis well known to farmers that pigs 
which are not very fat, such as brood sows and those that are kept 
over from one season to another, frequently capture these vermin. 
Nor is it necessary to this theory that the pig should be able to 
catch the living rat. Almost every butcher and drover has one or 
more dogs; these animals enjoy no fun better than that of killing 
rats, but they never eat them.t The rats, if killed in or neara 
pig pen, are left for the pigs who soon make away with them. 
Moreover, when turned into the fields and forests, the pig isa 
most assiduous hunter of rats, mice, and such like vermin, which 
he roots out of their underground nests and eagerly devours. Of 
this we ourselves have had ocular proof; and as these animals are 
known to be migratory, itis easy to suppose that rats, which have 
become infected in slaughter houses and elsewhere, may be thus 
caught and eaten by pigs. And it is most probably in this way that 
the wild swine of the European forests obtained the trichine which 
have been found inthem. The same is also the way in which the 
wild boar, whose flesh recently occasioned an epidemic of trichinosis 
in the village of Khiam, near the sources of the Jordan, cbtained its 
trichine.f ay 
A Sc eer LSP SMR TER PRY Or De Ch i Me 
* We have it on good authority that the horse has been known to kill 
with his teeth the rats that annoyed him in the manger. Of course 
he did not eat them. 
TIt isa curious fact that dogs are not so liable to harbor trichingw as 
- eats. We have frequently found trichinz in cats, but never in dogs, 
although it might be supposed that the dog, feeding more than the cat 
upon butcher’s offal, would be more liable to pick up trichinge. We be- 
lieve that the cause of this lies in the fact that cats eat rats, while dogs 
never eat them. Dr, Seiler informs us that almost all the eats that he 
has examined in Philadelphia, have been infected with trichine. 
#For full account of this outbreak see London Lancet for May, 1881. 
(American Edition.) 
