An Awful Lot of Trichinæ.
CHESTER, Ill., Feb. 23.—Hogs, great and small, in the Kaskaskia Bottom, for the past nine months or more, have been severely afflicted with trichinæ, which has been widespread and terribly fatal—a genuine epidemic among the porkers. The fatality of the disease has indeed been fearful. For a time the farmers in that locality believed their hogs to be dying from cholera, which, every now and then, makes its appearance among the swine kind, especially in the Bottoms, supposed to be caused by miasmatic influences, but the malady now prevailing is of another type, and far more destructive. The Kaskaskia Bottom, an area of some twelve thousand acres of country, early last fall, and until winter set in, in many localities, was literally strewn with dead hogs, great and small, but few farmers having hogs left to supply the year's demand for meat. It is estimated that not less than from ten to fifteen thousand head of hogs have died of trichinæ in that neighborhood within the past nine months, and though the disease has in a measure ceased its terrible ravages, it has by no means disappeared. It can scarcely be doubted but that nearly, if not quite, every hog in the region of country spoken of is more or less affected with this loathsome disease.—St. Louis Globe.