hand.

"Choost look, Dogdor; here's one of dose measley new pollies I god in
from Zingapore. De rest iss coffin' an' sneezin' to plow dere peaks off,
an' all de utter caitches iss kitchen him."

As parrots are worth from fifteen to thirty dollars apiece, "green" (not
in color, but training), and he had fifty or sixty in the store, the
situation was distinctly serious. Now, I was no specialist in the
peculiar diseases of parrots, but something had to be done, and, with a
boldness born of long practice, I drew my bow at a venture and let fly
this suggestion:--

"Try formalin; it's pretty fierce on the eyes and nose, but it won't
kill 'em; and, if you put a teaspoonful in the bottom of each cage, by
the time it evaporates no germ that gets into that cage will live long
enough to do any harm."

Five days later back he came, red-eyed but triumphant. "Dogdor, dot
vormaleen iss de pest shtuff I effer saw. It mos' shteenk me out of de
shtore, an' de pollies nearly sneeze dere fedders off, but it shtopt de
spret, an' _it's cureenall de seek ones_, an' I het a cold in de het,
_an' it's curt me_."

Before using it he had fourteen cases and three deaths; after, only
three new cases and no more deaths. I would, however, hardly advise any
human "coldie" to try such heroic treatment offhand, for the pungency
and painfulness of formalin vapor is something ferocious, though the
French physicians, with characteristic courage, are making extensive use
of it for this purpose, with excellent results under careful
supervision.

Another curious straw pointing in the direction of the infectious nature
of colds is the "annual cold," or "yearly sore throat," from which many
of us suffer. When we have had it we usually feel fairly safe from colds
for some months at least, often for a year. The only explanation that
seems in the least to explain is that colds, like other infections,
confer an immunity against another attack; only, unlike scarlet fever,
measles, smallpox, etc., this immunity, instead of for life, is only for
six months or a year. This immunity is due to the formation in the blood
of protective substances known as _anti-bodies_, which destroy or render
harmless the invading germs. Flabby, under-ventilated individuals, who
are always "catching cold," have such weak resisting powers that they
form hardly enough anti-bodies to terminate the first attack, without
having enough left to protect them from another for more than a few