TRICHINAE. 
551 
ton, published a special dispatch from Paris, with reference to an 
excitement which had been created at Lyons, France, with refer¬ 
ence to the large number of trichinae which had been found in 
some recently arrived American pork. 
Prof. Mueller, of the .Royal Veterinary Institute at Berlin, 
Prussia, wrote me in December, 1880, that of 88 American hogs 
which constitued a part of a recent shipment to Germany, 14 
had been found highly .trichinous by the inspector at Dresden. 
* * TRICHINIA SIS IN ITALY. 
So long ago as the 18th of February last, a special meeting of 
the Royal and National Veterinary Association of Italy was held 
to receive a communication from Signor Volante, the municipal 
veterinary surgeon of Turin. Volante reported that trichinae had 
been discovered in some American hams from Cincinnati , which 
had been sold in Turin, and that 4 per cent, of the lot were in¬ 
fected. The Association addressed a memoir to the Minister of 
the Interior with reference to a general measure towards organ¬ 
izing an efficient meat inspection throughout the kingdom. 
Excited by all this testimony, and by the demands of the pork 
interest of this country, our Government took up the question, 
but like almost everything else it does in connection with the 
suppression of animal pests, or animal hygiene, it took hold of 
the wrong end of the rope to begin with. 
It wrote to our consuls and other foreign representatives for 
reports, and one who reads them may readily see that if, as they 
say, nationalism plays the most important role in the desire of 
foreign Governments to render difficult the importation and sale 
of American pork in their respective countries, it plays a far more 
important part than the desire of our own Government to get at 
exact truth. 
It will not do for foreign representatives of this country to 
assert that there are no trichinae in American pork, as has been 
done, in the face of the facts of direct observation. 
It will not do for our State Department to publish a lie to 
the world, aye, a self-evident lie, as it did when it gave out a 
" Veterinary Journal, Vol. 9, p. 286, 1879. 
