222 
FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS, 
much less than £14,000^000 annually. For the whole 
country we slaughter yearly 2,000,000 head of horned 
cattle, and about five times as many head of sheep. 
Horse-flesh as Food. —A Berlin journal states that 
there are now in the Prussian capital seven butchers^ shops 
for the sale of horse-flesh, and that 750 horses have been 
killed in the present year for their supply. No animal can 
be slaughtered for these establishments without a certificate 
from the veterinary surgeon of the police. 
One is not surprised that the flesh of so cleanly feeding an 
animal as the horse should be resorted to as food. But as 
he parteth not the hoof and cheweth not the cud, the Jewish 
law-giver designated him unclean. There are other reasons, 
however, why the flesh of the animal is not eaten generally 
by us, which need not be particularised. 
Other nations make use of the flesh; and even Xenophon 
tells us that the army of the younger Cyrus, when marching 
through Arabia, or rather Mesopotamia, by stratagem caught 
many wild asses, and found their flesh to resemble that of 
the red deer, but more tender. In Persia the wild ass was 
prized not only as an object of chase, on account of its fleet¬ 
ness, but also for the delicacy of its flesh, which made it a 
luxury even at royal tables. 
Medical Education in Australia. —We learn from 
the Australian press that the first important step towards 
establishing a medical school in Victoria has been taken in 
the foundation of a lectureship of medicine at the Melbourne 
University 
At no very distant day we hope to see that this wise re¬ 
solve is followed by another of almost equal importance—the 
foundation of a chair of veterinary medicine and rural economy. 
A want of this kind is keenly felt in most of our new settle¬ 
ments, especially those where pastoral occupations form the 
great source of the wealth of the colony. 
Origin of Cow-pox. —The Imperial Academy of Medi¬ 
cine of Paris has appointed a commission to inquire into the 
origin of vaccine.— Lancet, 
Smallpox at the Cape of Good Hope. —Smallpox 
has been virulent and very fatal about Moselikatese^s country. 
It has nearly destroyed the tribe of the Bangainwates, 
amongst whom the dead were so numerous that they were 
abandoned to the hyenas.— Lancet. 
