This operation is performed to counteract the propensity which swine have of digging and furrowing up the earth. The ring is passed through what appears to be a prolongation of the septum, between the supplemental, or snout-bone, and the nasal. The animal is thus unable to obtain sufficient purchase to use his snout with any effect, without causing the ring to press so painfully upon the part that he is forced to desist. The ring, however, is apt to break, or it wears out in process of time, and has to be replaced. The snout should be perforated at weaning-time, after the animal has recovered from castration or spaying; and it will be necessary to renew the operation as it becomes of large growth. It is too generally neglected at first; but no pigs, young or old, should be suffered to run at large without this precaution. The sow's ring should be ascertained to be of sufficient strength previously to her taking the boar, on account of the risk of abortion, if the operation is renewed while she is with pig. Care must be taken by the operator not to go too close to the bone, and that the ring turn easily. A far better mode of proceeding is, when the pig is young, to cut through the cartilaginous and ligamentous prolongations, by which the supplementary bone is united to the proper nasals. The divided edges of the cartilage will never re-unite, and the snout always remains powerless. FEEDING AND FATTENING. Roots and fruits are the natural food of the hog, in a wild as well as in a domesticated state; and it is evident that, however omnivorous it may occasionally appear, its palate is by no means insensible to the difference in eatables, since, whenever it finds variety, it will select the best with as much cleverness as other quadrupeds. Indeed, the hog is more nice in the selection of his vegetable diet than any of the other domesticated herbivorous animals. To a certain extent he is omnivorous, and may be reared on the refuse of slaughter-houses; but such food is not wholesome, nor is it natural; for, though he is omnivorous, he is not essentially carnivorous. The refuse of the dairy-farm is more congenial to his health, to say nothing of the quality of its flesh. Swine are generally fattened for pork at from six to nine months old; and for bacon, at from a year to two years. Eighteen months is generally considered the proper age for a good bacon hog. The feeding will always, in a great measure, depend upon the circumstances of the owner--upon the kind of food which he has at his disposal, and can best spare--and the purpose for which the animal is intended. It will also, in some degree, be regulated by the season; it being possible to feed pigs very differently in the summer from what they are fed in the winter.