MODERN" FEEDING OE FIGS. 
305 
tion required is usually great, the mal-position of foetus and 
uterus preventing effectual expulsive force on the part of the 
mare. 
MODERN FEEDING OF PIGS, 
AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE FORMATION OF THE SKULL 
AND DENTITION.* 
By Olof Sohwartzkopff, Y.M.D. 
During the past few years many objections have been 
raised, on the part of our practical breeders, to the correct¬ 
ness of the older rules for recognizing the age of our domestic 
animals. Several cases of an extraordinarily early develop¬ 
ment of dentition have been observed in fat stock shows, 
and other exhibitions, and it has been alleged that modern 
feeding, with the tendency to produce early maturity, results 
also in an earlier shedding of the teeth. Not only in the 
United States have these doubts been heard, but also in Eng¬ 
land and Germany. In 1882 Prof. G. T. Brown published in 
the journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, of England, an 
article in which he comes to the conclusion that, as a general 
thing, the views of the breeders cannot be relied upon, and 
that the recognition of the age from the teeth is still the best 
and surest. In June, 1886, the executive committee of the fat 
stock show at Berlin preferred similar complaints, and re¬ 
quested the Minister of Agriculture to introduce new experi¬ 
ments at the veterinary schools and agricultural experiment 
stations in Germany, to ascertain whether the signs of age 
from dentition, sexual development and growth of horns, can 
appear at an earlier time in our precocious breeds, than hither¬ 
to believed; Accordingly, Prof. A. Nehring, of Berlin, pub¬ 
lished in the “ Landwirtschaftliche Jahrbucher, of 1888,” a 
series of new dentition tables for pigs, as a result of his studies 
and investigations upon a collection of one hundred and 
thirty-one skulls of different kinds of pigs, at the museum of 
the Royal Agricultural School at Berlin. 
* Reprint from Bulletin Agricultural Experiment Station, University of 
Minnesota. 
