102 
FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS. 
neglect or fault, rendered unfit for service. The same rule 
might be applied to cavalfy officers who fail to maintain the 
efficiency of their regiments and companies. The vacancies 
thus created could be filled by corresponding transfers from 
the regular and volunteer infantry P — Times . 
Age of Pigs. What constitutes a Hog. —The 
American Congress has decided that a pig becomes a hog at 
six months old, and slaughtered hogs are taxed, while pigs 
are not. In one of the districts of New York city 160,000 
hogs were recently slaughtered in the space of two months. 
The assessors have no criterion by which to determine their 
ages, either by examining their teeth or measuring their tails, 
yet, in the performance of their duties, they are required to 
ascertain this fact. Congress will have to determine the 
criterion. —American Paper. [Congress will only have to 
adopt the principle of ascertaining the age of the pig as 
expounded in Professor Simonds 5 work, to arrive at a correct 
decision on this matter.] 
Effects of Eating Measly Pork and Sausages 
in Prussia. —If all the accounts which reach us be correct, 
there is an alarming prevalence of trichina disease in Prussia, 
in consequence of eating raw or badly cooked bacon and 
sausages. The last account we have seen is from Hettstiidt, 
in the Government of Marseburg, which states that after a 
feast, at which fresh sausages formed a prominent dish, ninety 
persons became affected with trichina, of whom twenty soon 
died. The local governments of Cologne and Erfurt have 
issued proclamations on the subject, calling attention to the 
danger of eating this description of food. 
Singular Accumulation of Fat in the Omen¬ 
tum of a Sheep.— We were very recently afforded an 
opportunity of examining the carcass of a sheep, which had 
been fed with others for the butcher, in which all the fatty 
matter had been deposited in the omentum. The mass of 
adipose material here met with weighed no less than forty 
pounds avoirdupois , being nearly equal in weight to the 
entire carcass of the animal, which was thin and attenuated. 
