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PROTECTION OF ORCHARDS FROM MICE. 
Buffalo, New York.—It is well known that young orchards throughout the 
northern States are partly and sometimes wholly destroyed by mice, especially 
when the snow lies deep for any length of time. Many remedies have been 
applied, but few if any prove an effectual preventive. I propose to take a strip 
of tarred paper, such as is commonly used for roofing purposes, say 18 to 20 
inches long and of sufficient width to wrap around the tree twice, taking care to * 
remove the earth a little, so as to get the paper well down. Tie the paper in 
two places with a string, return the earth up to the paper, and you may then 
feel sure that the tree is safe from harm. The paper should be taken off in the 
spring and laid away for future use. The paper will last several years, as time 
and weather appear to affect it but little, and the expense is small in comparison 
to the advantages to be gained. 
THE “SPANISH FEVER.’ 
The human mind—perhaps especially the American mind—has a tendency to 
act spasmodically, aud to foster periodical excitements, as well upon industrial 
topics as in social or political matters. The recent prevalence of the “ Spanish 
fever,” or “splenic fever” of Professor Gamgee, at certain railroad stations of 
the west, and in a few of the eastern cattle-yards in which western cattle are 
received, affords a good illustration of this fact. For twenty years, at least, 
have the Gulf-coast cattle been brought northward, and during all that time have 
native cattle herding for a time with them, or feeding over their trail, sickened 
mysteriously and died almost inevitably if the migration occurred in the heat of 
summer, but not otherwise. The cases have not only been multiplied season 
after season, but they occur with such uniformity and regularity that they are 
expected with the coming of every southern drove, in the proper season, and 
under the usual circumstances. Whatever the latent cause, however the infec- 
tion is communicated, the connection of these migrating herds with the malady 
is so patent to common observation, so fully pointed out by a mass of facts, that 
one’s reason and common sense are stultified by a denial of the evident fact that 
these incoming cattle are in some way the cause of the sickness. Veterinary 
surgery may be nonplussed, but the facts remain unexplained. Medical men 
may say it is impossible for apparently well cattle to cause fatal sickness to 
others, and yet exposed animals sicken and die without remedy, and no ade- 
quate or even plausible theory in avoidance of the unwelcome conclusion is 
proposed. Were there no mysteries that medical science still leaves unfathomed, 
and were its postulates in every case made the subject of a demonstration mathe- 
matically complete, the bare assertion of the impossibility, without proof, might 
be accepted. Thus while distant doctors ignored the disease, and herdsmen in 
Illinois cared nothing for the losses of their brethren in Missouri, a change in 
the mode of travel brought the Texas droves directly into the heart of the west, 
and even into the stock-yards of the east, when straightway a panic arose which 
struck at once boards of health, railroad officials, and State executives, and filled 
the columns of newspapers with vague and bascless apprehensions and theories, 
creating excitement and alarm, reducing beef consumption, and bankrupting the 
astonished drovers. The panic has subsided as rapidly as it arose; the disease 
could not spread beyond the animals infected, with a decent cleanliness in cattle 
trucks, and in no event beyond the animals actually transported ; and a seclu- 
sion of southern from western cattle instantly stayed the progress of the disease. 
That the importance of the subject is not overlooked by this Department is - 
shown by the repeated investigations undertaken in former years, and in the 
